Osprey are back! These beloved birds have returned for another season

Did you know dozens of volunteers watch over thriving osprey nests throughout Newport County?

Photos by Chris Powell

Osprey will never win any awards as Parents of the Year: they’re the kind of “snowbirds” who fly south for the winter and leave their kids to fend for themselves. But these unique raptors — a single species that live on every continent except Antarctica — are endlessly fascinating to Lincoln Dark, a volunteer who runs the osprey tracking program for the Audubon Society of Rhode Island.

“There are some races of osprey that do vary a bit, typically in warmer climates; they are slightly lighter in color and have some slightly different coloration, but they are all still the same species,” says Dark. “Osprey mate for life, but they migrate independently of one another, and they migrate without their young.”

Dark says volunteers give their time each spring, summer and fall to monitor osprey nests, with special attention given to mating season and the success or failure of each season’s chicks. “Everyone has a story about what brought them to osprey. And for me, all those are so inspirational,” he says.

Dark’s own osprey origin story is a little, well, dark.

“It sounds made up because it was so crazy,” he says. “I was on Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown with my field ornithology class. We observed an osprey over the ocean diving from about 60 to 100 feet into the ocean and grabbing a fish. That’s obviously amazing. But as we’re watching, a bald eagle comes shooting out of the woods and begins chasing the osprey; many people might not know that bald eagles often steal food from other birds.

“It was this amazing aerial chase, and the bald eagle made the osprey drop the fish and grabbed it out of the air and flew away. It was something you’d see on Animal Planet. It really inspired me to get into osprey; this is nature in action.”

Chris Powell, who heads the Conanicut Island Raptor Project, calls osprey “one of the most charismatic species of hunting and fishing birds”; he’s so enraptured by the raptors that he drives a car with a “OSPREY” vanity plate around Jamestown as he helps monitor the 26 osprey nests on the island.

The popularity of osprey has something to do with their numbers, which now exceed 1,000 birds in Rhode Island alone. “People see them a lot —more than red-tailed hawks or bald eagles,” says Powell. But that hasn’t always been the case. Exposure to the pesticide DDT, which weakened the shells of osprey eggs, nearly extirpated the species from the U.S. in the middle of the last century, which makes their current baby boom even more remarkable.

“When Audubon started this program, there were only 10 nests in Rhode Island, which makes last year’s number of 423 nests incredible,” says Dark. “To me, it shows a whole community of people and scientists in the area that care about wildlife working together to protect the species, but it also shows the persistence of the species itself.”

Osprey will build their nests pretty much anywhere; they prefer a tall perch with an unobstructed view of the water, but have been found in landlocked Burrillville and Gloucester ,and sometimes will even nest on the ground on isolated islands.

People with summer houses near the shore sometimes return to find that a mating pair of osprey have taken up residence on their roof; light poles are another favorite nesting spot, and Rhode Island Energy has a designated employee tasked with relocating osprey nests from power lines. “There was an osprey nest that successfully raised two young on top of one of the 285-foot towers on the Mount Hope Bridge,” notes Dark.

Even if you’re not osprey obsessive, it’s pretty easy to spot one of these soaring fish-eaters, which are also known as sea hawks, river hawks, or fish hawks. With a wingspan of 5-6 feet, they’re pretty noticeable when loitering over salt or fresh water, using their keen eyesight to hunt in the shallows. But thanks to the Audubon project and others like it, finding an osprey nest is as simple as checking a website for one in your neighborhood.

“Osprey have high nest-site fidelity, which means they love the same nest every year,” says Dark. “Even if the nest is gone, they will rebuild it.”

On Jamestown, the Conanicut Island Raptor Project has raised several highly visible, 20-foothigh osprey nesting platforms in the Marsh Meadows Wildlife Preserve. “There’s about five or six nests that you can see all from the same place, and during the summer you’ll see osprey flying through the marsh, diving, and adult osprey and chicks nesting,” Dark says.

Much osprey monitoring takes place with binoculars or a spotting scope (drones are a no-no because they can scare off the birds). “The nestlings, when they first hatch, are very curious about the world and are peeking their little heads out,” Dark notes. A few nests also have cameras that deliver a live feed of osprey coming and going and, during the spring, raising and feeding fish to their young.

Male and female osprey take turns sitting on the nest to warm and protect their eggs between March and mid-June, when 2-4 chicks typically hatch. In 2024, Audubon’s 70 observers tallied a record 379 osprey fledglings that survived to migrate as far away as Argentina for the winter.

The salt ponds of Point Judith and the Bristol, Barrington, and Warren area are other hot spots for osprey nests, although Dark says the birds have been steadily increasing their territory in Rhode Island. In Newport, active nests can be found atop light towers at Rogers High School and Freebody Park.

“Over time it’s slowly starting to expand down through Aquidneck Island, mostly in Portsmouth and a bit in Middletown,” he says. “If you really want to guarantee a sighting, my favorite nest in Rhode Island is across the street from Narragansett Town Beach; there’s a utility pole there in the summer with a nest on top that nearly always has osprey.”

Generally speaking, it’s not hard to find osprey anywhere within 25 miles of water if you’re looking for them, Dark says.

“If you’re along the coast in Rhode Island, you step out your door, you’re gonna see osprey in the summertime.”

For more information about the Audubon’s Osprey Monitoring Program, and a link to the RI Osprey Nest Sites Map, visit www.asri.org/osprey. And for more information about the Conanicut Island Raptor Project, visit www.conanicutraptors.com.