Origins

The two principles, Tom Guay and Ken Green started thinking about how to monitor ospreys while conducting water quality monitoring trips throughout the Severn Watershed. The water quality monitoring program is part of the Seven Rivers Association’s long standing commitment to capture water quality conditions every year from April through October. As we boated up and down the watershed visiting dozens of stations throughout the sampling season, we realized that we were seeing birds and nests in the same location year after year and bounced around numerous questions between us regarding how many nests were there in our watershed, how many young were being successfully launched and how might our situation compare to other Osprey studies up and down the East coast.

Our comprehensive inventory included identification of all Osprey structures - including Nest poles, navigation markers and tree nests. In 2023 Tom mapped a total of 117 structures that included 75 occupied nests on the mainstem of the Severn River. Ken identified 64 structures in the Whitehall basin in early Spring 2024 with 51 (80%) active nests. As a 2024 season progressed, we continued to inventory the status of each structure and as spring moved to Summer, we identified nest occupancy. We have come up with a protocol to use mirror poles to look into the nests to identify the presence of chicks and juveniles. We have created a Google Earth map for all structures as well as a collection of excel data sheets of nest description, nest occupation and chick and juvenile growth.