The Babies Are Getting Ready To Go!
Osprey parents Rachel and Steve will soon bid good-bye to their chicks in Audubon Camp on Hog Island, Maine. Rachel laid the first of three eggs in late April, and the chicks are expected to start flying and leave the nest in the next few weeks. See the chicks in daylight hours fluffing their newly feathered wings on the live cam!
Before the babies were even glimmers in their mother’s eye, the male ospreys were doing a little mating dance to win her over. Male Ospreys perform an aerial “sky-dance,” often clasping a fish while they alternate periods of hovering with slow, shallow swoops as high as 600 feet or more above the nest site for 10 minutes or more. Most Ospreys are faithful to the same mate year after year and return to the same nest.
These young Ospreys will make their first migration alone, instinctively knowing where to go without instruction from parents, and will likely return to the vicinity of their hatching place when they are about two years old; breeding for the first time when they are three – and getting their aerial dance on!
