Tweeters,
For 4 years straight in the early part of this century, at least one of the Hamm Creek (opposite the Boeing Developmental Center) Osprey pair returned on March 31st. (Leap year included!) I led a Seattle Audubon trip along the lower Duwamish River today - no Ospreys spotted anywhere from Jack Block Park to Cecil Moses Park.

May all your birds be identified,
Denis DeSilvis
avnacrs4birds at outlook.com

Avian Acres 🦉
Roy, WA
________________________________
From: tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu <tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu> on behalf of Kelly McAllister <mcallisters4 at comcast.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2018 4:11:24 PM
To: 'Stewart Wechsler'; tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: RE: [Tweeters] Are our "early" Ospreys not "arriving", but only "passing through"?

In the 1981-1984 period I participated in aerial surveys of bald eagle nests in western Washington and we would occasionally encounter an osprey perched on or very close to an existing osprey nest in the April 10-15 period. I always thought that these were birds that would eventually nest at those sites. To me, they seemed to be the earliest arrivals and active nesting was still weeks away.

I've been in Virginia and seeing osprey at several locations since March 23rd. The first one I saw I thought quite significant but now I'm thinking this is simply when they arrive here on the east coast.

Kelly McAllister
Olympia

From: tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu [mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Stewart Wechsler
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2018 3:23 PM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Tweeters] Are our "early" Ospreys not "arriving", but only "passing through"?

If I'm not mistaken, years ago I estimated that the pair of Ospreys, that nested on the light post between the West Seattle Bridge and the Ash Grove Cement plant, arrived about April 23rd. That said, every year I read Tweeters reports I hear of Ospreys "arriving" weeks earlier in different spots in Washington. I haven't kept careful track of what day I see the first Osprey on that nest, but it is never weeks earlier than that April 23rd. My thought was that maybe those first reportedly "arriving" were really "passing through", and the first sighted migrants were headed to the most northerly nesting sites. Does anyone have information on whether the earliest Osprey sightings in Washington are not arriving at nesting sites, but that they may be only passing through to nesting sites the furthest north? These earliest Ospreys that may be only "passing through" have long been referred to as "early". If it turns out that all of the earliest sightings are just sightings of those headed the furthest north, maybe we would stop calling them "early", and maybe start calling them something like the "first passer-bys and most northerly destined".

-Stewart
www.stewardshipadventures.com<http://www.stewardshipadventures.com>
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