Helicopters, oyster boats, and barges called in to save rare raptors

July 8, 2024 8:31 AM

Helicopters, oyster boats, and barges called in to save rare raptors from extinction. Artificial nesting platforms are installed at key coastal sites across South Australia to help the eastern osprey breed after the population dropped to just 50 pairs of birds.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (4 comments total)

These osprey nest platforms are widespread on Long Island (NY), generally a simple plywood platform on top of a wooden utility pole, and have contributed to the rebound of osprey populations here. They are amazing birds and anything that helps their population rebound is a good thing!
posted by bgribble at 11:26 AM on July 8 [1 favorite]

This I like. Protecting the environmental anywhere is a Sysiphean task but especially in Oz given its mining, its fragile but enormous biodiversity and, as always, rapid climate change. This is a step upward. And ospreys are cool. Saw one in the Arboretum once, perched atop a cottonwood. I don't how big they get down under but that bird was huge. Truly an eagle. It was being harassed by five crows while maintaining strict obliviousness all the while. So cool it was and such a noble profile it had.
posted by y2karl at 6:01 PM on July 8

> Truly an eagle.

All birbs are great birbs and all that, but I think you diminish the osprey by comparing it to an eagle, particularly if you are thinking of the bald eagle which it often overlaps range with. Bald eagles are jerks who make their living mostly by stealing fish from other seabirds because they are big bullies and they can.

I recently learned that the bird known as a "seahawk" on the US West Coast is also an osprey.
posted by bgribble at 5:59 AM on July 9

This is like the one I saw on a treetop while canoeing in the Arboretum in Seattle decades ago. The one I saw presented a lot of white when looking up at it in the treetop . Bigger than than a red tailed hawk, smaller than a bald eagle, both of which I have seen many times in flight over Capitol Hill. And, yes, it's the bird the Seahawks are named after.

Perhaps memory has embroidered my recollection a bit but it was a big bird. I also saw one once in flight over the walkway to the ferry terminal, being mobbed by seagulls instead of crows. It was a lot bigger than the seagulls. And as equally unperturbed as the one on the treetop.
posted by y2karl at 4:38 PM on July 11