Starting in May, staff members of the Maryland Coastal Bays Program left the office with one goal in mind – to collect data on osprey nests.
And what they found in the bays was alarming — of the 15 active nests found this season, 10 had failed to produce fledglings.
“What we know is there’s a significant drop in the success rate,” said Bird Habitat Coordinator Kim Abplanalp.
Dave Brinker, an aviation conservation ecologist with the Natural Heritage Program at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (the agency partnering with the Maryland Coastal Bays Program on the survey), said that failure rate is not normal. In years past, he said, it was common to see just two nests fail to produce young.
But the issue is not unique to Maryland’s coastal bays, he said. Communities up and down the eastern seaboard are reporting lower osprey populations, with the decline largely attributed to a decline in the bird’s main food source, menhaden.
“It’s a sign of an ecosystem that is being severely challenged, and it will have ripple effects into other things,” Brinker said. “That’s where you start to be concerned.”