Osprey Nation Program Gets a Boost in Old Lyme

Sam Griswold, Sarah Evarts and Kededria Lewis raising the Osprey nest platform in Old Lyme. Photo courtesy of Herman Blanke.

A deteriorating Osprey nest platform near Great Island in the lower Connecticut River River estuary has been replaced, thanks to the efforts of three local middle and high school students.

On Sunday, November 23, Sam Griswold, a junior at Valley Regional High School, and Sarah Evarts and Kededria Lewis, eighth-graders at Haddam-Killingworth Middle School, helped transport material to the site and erected a 12-foot pole with nest platform at a spot in Old Lyme where Ospreys successfully nested in previous years. The old nest platform fell into disrepair a few seasons ago.

Working under the auspices of the Old Saybrook-based Maritime Education Network, the three built the platform as part of a new community outreach effort, Osprey Nation, inaugurated earlier this year by Connecticut Audubon Society. The project is a citizen science partnership that provides stewardship and monitoring to the state’s resurgent Osprey population.

Herman Blanke, a member of Connecticut Audubon Society’s Board of Directors and a resident of Old Lyme, was on hand to take photographs, which you can see in this slide show. Hover the mouse over the bottom of each photo to see captions.

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The late 1960’s and ‘70’s saw a steep decline in the population of Ospreys throughout its range, including in the lower Connecticut Valley, as a result of eggshell calcium deficiency, caused by DDT. The banning of DDT in 1972 prevented further decline, as conservationists labored to restore the Osprey to its former glory.

One of these conservationists, Paul Spitzer, Ph.D., an ornithologist and part-time Old Lyme resident, pioneered efforts contributing to the recovery of the Ospreys in this area. His technique was to “borrow” a third of the healthy Osprey eggs from nests in the Chesapeake Bay and place them in nests on Great Island, where adult Osprey adopted them as their own.

Spitzer points out that a growing population like that on Great Island forces juvenile Osprey to build nests on the ground as available man-made platforms are occupied by older, more experienced birds. Nesting on the ground makes ospreys vulnerable to predators.

One of the solutions is to erect additional platforms, which is why the three students undertook their project.

In its first season, Osprey Nation’s 100-plus stewards located 414 nests in five counties and 42 towns, and monitored 174 of those nests. Connecticut Audubon staff plotted all the nests and data submitted by the stewards on an interactive map (available at www.ctaudubon.org/2014/06/osprey-nation/). Osprey Nation stewards confirmed that 78 young Ospreys were successfully fledged in 2014, a number that Connecticut Audubon Society is confident is low.

Osprey Nation is a partnership with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Osprey Nation data will be submitted to DEEP biologists.

Providing guidance to the students were Katharine David, founder of the Maritime Education Network; Sandy Sanstrom, coordinator of the Maritime Education Network’s Environmental Youth Group; Andrew Griswold, an Ivoryton resident who heads Connecticut Audubon’s EcoTravel office in Essex; and Old Lyme resident Herman Blanke, a member of Connecticut Audubon’s board of directors.