The live feed of an osprey camera gives viewers an opportunity to witness key moments in this bird species’ breeding cycle.

“We have pictures of the little chicks just coming out of the eggs,” said Jim Denham, communications director for the Essex Land Trust. “And then you see them being fed. One of the interesting things is the fish that the osprey bring and how they feed the chicks.”

The nurturing of an osprey fledgling is just one example of the footage captured by the Essex Land Trust from 2010 through 2019 on a camera mounted to its osprey platform in Essex’s South Cove on Thatchbed Island.

The land trust’s focus on ospreys is due to the birds’ importance as an “indicator species,” said Denham.

“They tell us about the quality of the environment, specifically the quality of the water and availability of diverse fish species,” he said.

The osprey population was near extinction due to the use of DDT as an insecticide in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, according to Tom Andersen, director of communications for the Connecticut Audubon Society.

The osprey would eat fish contaminated with the compound, and it impacted the amount of calcium available for a female osprey to produce an eggshell thick enough for a chick’s survival.

“When they laid their eggs, the shells would be relatively thin,” said Denham. “Although they are very gentle on them, the eggs broke and that led to a decline” in the osprey population.

With an environmental movement in the 1970s that included the ban of DDT as an insecticide in 1972, and through the efforts of conservation groups, there has been a resurgence in the osprey population in Connecticut.

“It shows what can happen when people do the right things for wildlife,” said Denham. “Not only does wildlife benefit, but so does humankind.”

Osprey platforms, like the one installed by the Essex Land Trust on Thatchbed Island in 2003, have been key to the osprey’s success.

“One of the tactics that was started was the construction of platforms to increase their reproductive rate,” said Denham. “Fortunately, they took very easily to platforms. They became very accustomed to using them.”

Osprey, whose diet consists mainly of fish, build large nests near bodies of water such as rivers, lakes, wetlands, or coastal marshes. In addition to platforms, they have also used telephone poles, pilings, and channel markers, among other man-made objects, for nests, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

Since 2014, The Connecticut Audubon Society and the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection have collaborated on Osprey Nation, a project to track the location and number of nests in Connecticut.

Volunteer stewards collect data on osprey from the different nesting sites in Connecticut and compile it for an annual report. Osprey nests are also mapped through Osprey Nation.

The latest report in 2019 revealed an increasing trend of active nests, the total number of nests in Connecticut and the number of volunteer stewards tracking and submitting data.

Although there was a decline in the number of fledglings in 2019, the Connecticut Audubon Society says it’s unclear whether this is an anomaly or a sign of a trend.

In terms of total nests, Andersen says, “we think we pretty much have them all right now. We’re almost at the point where if there is an increase in the number of nests, it probably reflects the amount of effort put in.”

Denham monitors five nests for Osprey Nation and enjoys seeing the same pair of ospreys arrive at a specific nest each spring.

“The thing that blows your mind is that when they migrate in the fall, they do not migrate together and they do not migrate to the same locations,” said Denham. “They don’t live together in the winter but the same two will come back to the same location to breed again.”

Denham says it was a desire to “tell that story,” of the osprey’s nest fidelity and breeding cycle, that was the main impetus behind the Essex Land Trust’s publication earlier this year of Thatchbed Island & its Ospreys, a 45-page, full color booklet.

The booklet, which was made possible through a grant from the Community Foundation of Middlesex County, details the plight and recovery of osprey in Connecticut. Information on Thatchbed Island and the osprey conservation efforts of the Essex Land Trust are also included.

With an average wingspan of five feet, Andersen says that ospreys are an obvious reminder of the importance of caring for the environment.

“Ospreys are a terrific success story and they are big and visible,” said Andersen. “They are a great way to understand that even though there is a lot of bad news about the environment, it’s not all bad. It took a lot of work, but it shows that if you put the conservation effort in, it’s possible to have a positive effect on the environment. Ospreys are an example of that.”

Due to predation of the Thatchbed Island osprey nest, the Essex Land Trust now features a live camera stream from osprey cameras used at different locations in Connecticut. The OspreyCam live stream and the booklet Thatchbed Island & its Ospreys are available at the Essex Land Trust website: www.essexlandtrust.org.