What ospreys can tell us about climate change

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Support for Here & Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

**Matt Joyce** (0:16)
WBUR Podcast, Boston.

**Miley Bull** (0:24)
We're concerned because osprey populations to our south, from the Chesapeake through New Jersey, have absolutely collapsed.

**Chris Bentley** (0:33)
Ospreys are mighty birds that hunt fish from the sky. What's causing their populations to plummet?
It's Friday, July 31st, and this is Here & Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, sure, painting is hard, but try rendering portraits and cityscapes using a typewriter.

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But first, if you've ever seen an osprey in the wild, you know they're impressive birds. They're ferocious fishers scouring oceans and lakes from the sky, then plunging into the water to rip out their prey. Spending time near ospreys can expose you to some surreal sights, like seeing the sun glint off the silvery scales of a fish as it soars overhead, grasped in the birds' talons.
But along the Connecticut shore on Long Island Sound, scientists and citizens are noticing a troubling change in the local population of ospreys. They're having fewer chicks. In fact, this past year, observers documented the lowest number since 2014 That's why Anthony Brooks and producer Lynn Managon wanted to catch up with some researchers in Connecticut for a closer look at how the birds are doing.

**Lisa Lovejoy** (2:27)
Oh, there's a nestling's head. Now I can see one little baby.
This is the nest that I believe had two eggs in it.

**Anthony Brooks** (2:38)
That's Lisa Lovejoy from Brantford, Connecticut, a nest observer for the Connecticut Audubon Society. She trains her binoculars on four osprey nests and says she's been seeing evidence that the birds are hungry.

**Lisa Lovejoy** (2:52)
The last time I checked on this nest, the adult in the nest was chirping. And you could tell it was like, you know, calling for its mate to bring food.
Whenever I have recorded them, about a half to three quarters of them have smaller fish than in previous years. But they are catching fish. They're just not catching the large fish, the larger fish.

**Anthony Brooks** (3:19)
That could explain an increase in nest failures. That's when the osprey's nesting attempts end before any chicks successfully hatch or leave the nest. It's been happening up and down the East Coast. And now it appears to be starting in Connecticut. It could be due to overfishing, which means less food for the birds.
To understand more about this, we spoke to Miley Bull, Senior Director of Science and Conservation for the Connecticut Audubon Society. Miley, thanks so much for joining us.

**Miley Bull** (3:49)
Thanks, Anthony. Good to be here.

**Anthony Brooks** (3:51)
Give me a sense of where you are right now. What are you looking at?

**Miley Bull** (3:55)
Right now, I'm at the confluence of the Housatonic River and the Long Island Sound at the border of a 840-acre salt marsh called the Charles E. Wheeler Wildlife Refuge. And I'm standing on our observation tower, which is a perfect perspective of the entire ecosystem here.

**Anthony Brooks** (4:14)
All right. So tell us what you've been observing recently about the health of their population. What have you been seeing?

**Miley Bull** (4:22)
Well, we've been monitoring this population since about 2014
And since 2014, the population has been increasing incrementally almost every year until about last year. And it looked like the population began to waver a little bit. And we're concerned because osprey populations to our south from the Chesapeake through New Jersey have absolutely collapsed.

**Anthony Brooks** (4:48)
Right. And so my understanding is ospreys nearly went extinct because of the pesticide DDT before it was banned in 1972
Are you concerned that we might be heading in that direction or that there's something like that happening to this population?

**Miley Bull** (5:05)
Yeah, not so much on the chemical level, but possibly on the food level.
If the food declines for ospreys, they can't raise their young and produce the way they had in the past. So apparently, it could be a lack of prey that the ospreys are noticed, are suffering from now or may be suffering from now. We've had some of our monitors notice that there had been some osprey nest abandonment, maybe some young, maybe starving. But we're not sure yet. It's still in the middle of the season.