They’re Not Just Passing Through

The ospreys have landed. Finally.

A pair of the birds, which apparently migrated to Upper Newport Bay during the winter, are among the first of the raptors to nest in Southern California in recent decades, environmentalists say.

And officials who watch over the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve in Newport Beach said they couldn’t be more enthused.

“I never thought that it would happen,” said Russ Kerr, a volunteer naturalist at the reserve who built the nest in 1993 in hopes ospreys would settle in. “They always migrate here in the winter, but they would always fly back to wherever they came from.”

Kerr’s nest sits on a 4-foot-wide platform atop a telephone pole on Shellmaker Island, a small, brushy outcropping in Upper Newport Bay. But the man-made nest sat vacant for the most part. A single osprey once settled in but left a few days later. Last year, a pair were spotted eyeing the nest but were driven away by possessive gulls.

This year, a pair were able to secure the nest for themselves, and three osprey chicks hatched this month.

Kerr hopes more nesting pairs will come. “It’d be fun to have several,” he said.

The ospreys have already done some remodeling.

“There’s obviously some new sticks and some new trash that they’ve decorated their nest with,” said Brian Shelton, a wildlife biologist at the reserve. “You know, birds like shiny things.”

Ospreys are medium-size raptors that grow up to 23 inches long and have wingspans up to 6 feet. They weigh between 4 and 5 pounds. They eat mostly fish and hunt by hovering over the water and then dropping into the water feet-first to seize their food.

It’s not unusual to spot ospreys in Orange County during the winter. But there is no evidence that they have nested here in the last 35 years, officials said. Statewide, the last nesting was reported in San Diego County in the late 1990s, and that was believed to be the first in that county since 1912, according to the San Diego Natural History Museum website.

Their arrival in the back reaches of Newport Harbor is good news for bird watchers. Ospreys were devastated by DDT and other pesticides in the 1960s and are still an endangered species in some areas. The now-banned pesticide caused eggshells to become so thin that the birth rate declined.

“Something just wasn’t working for them, whatever it was,” Shelton said.

On Wednesday afternoon, the parents were flying off in 30-minute increments to bring back fish for their babies. The chicks, in the meantime, did a little bird-watching as Caspian terns and other new neighbors flew by. A green scrap of fencing adorned their nest.

Reserve officials hope that the ospreys will stick around Orange County, or at least return seasonally.

“We’ve got yachts and million-dollar homes,” Shelton joked. “It’s prime real estate here.”

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Begin text of infobox

The Osprey

It is one of North America’s largest birds of prey and feeds almost exclusively on fish. It can nest on structures such as telephone and power poles or nesting platforms.

Scientific name: Pandion haliaetus

Coloring: white crown, forehead, breast and underside. Black wings and back. Dark stripe across eyes.

Size: 21 to 23 inches

Wingspan: 59 to 71 inches

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Source: Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Los Angeles Times