Tashmoo Osprey Sings a New Song

A forlorn osprey spent each day last summer perched on the remnants of a wooden nest frame atop a navigational piling by the main channel in Lake Tashmoo. Notwithstanding the raptor’s fierce yellow eyes and sharp beak, his lonesome expression was enough to make a honky-tonk jukebox sing a sad country song.

Ospreys, once appropriately known as fish hawks (they prey exclusively on fish), generally mate for life. Following their southerly winter migration, during which the males and females go their separate ways, the ospreys return north and, if both survive, they reunite at their traditional nesting sites each spring, a round-trip of thousands of miles.

Upon his arrival last spring, the lonesome osprey (let’s call him Hank) dutifully and repeatedly carried sticks to the nest site, most of which fell into the water. His mate was nowhere to be seen, likely because she was smarter than Hank and knew it would be a futile effort.

The sad truth is that a guy who insists on staking a claim to a pole that can’t support a nest isn’t much of a catch. 

Earlier generations of ospreys had built their nests and raised their chicks on what is commonly known as the Tashmoo osprey pole, erected in 2005 as part of an Islandwide effort by the late Gus Ben David of Oak Bluffs and many volunteers to create more nesting sites. But a storm last winter had taken a toll on the platform, and only two cross-arms of the frame remained — the other two perpendicular cross-arms had rotted out.

There Hank sat last summer amid the few bare sticks he’d managed to affix to the pole. Sometimes, he picked at a fish he’d grabbed out of the surrounding waters, but mostly, he watched the sky.

The pole is flanked by shallow clam flats and marks the south corner of the west flat bordering the narrow entrance channel. It’s a landmark for passing boaters who delight in seeing the resident ospreys and watch for the first small, fluffy heads of newborn chicks to appear in late May.

Hank’s sad plight did not go unnoticed by the year-round and seasonal Island residents who make up Tashmoo’s tight-knit community. In a July 2025 post titled, Forlorn Osprey, on the Facebook site, Tashmoo Friends, Diane Hartman, a seasonal resident who spends the summer on her 36-foot Monk Classic Trawler, Dot.Calm, which is moored in Tashmoo and winters in Florida, said that for the past 20 years, “there’d been an osprey nest on the channel post, but this year it is gone. Having been displaced this year by hurricanes myself, I can certainly relate. What can we do to rebuild the structure so he can rebuild his nest?”

The Tisbury harbor department responded to the community concern by turning to Alec Gale, a member of the resourceful Gale family of West Tisbury. Alec, whose resume includes fish wholesaler, welder, well driller, mooring installer, dock builder, boat builder, hockey dad and just about anything else, which the born and bred Islander can do as needed. 

It was late fall. Hank had departed. Alec said he’d figure out a way to rebuild the nest frame before Hank returned for the 2026 spring nesting season. A donation from two local boaters to Tisbury Waterways Inc., a nonprofit steward of the town’s waterways, covered the costs of marine-grade building materials.

Following this year’s brutal winter, and just weeks after Tashmoo was finally ice-free, there was little time to lose. Ospreys begin arriving on-Island in mid-March. And so on Saturday morning, March 21, Alec and his 14-year-old son, Riley, an eighth grader at the West Tisbury School, and Reid Silva and his 16-year-old son, Owen, a Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School sophomore, began assembling the frame for a new nest platform. They were working at the Lake street dock when Alec said he thought he saw a bird on the osprey pole.

Looking through a pair of binoculars, Alec confirmed it was a lone osprey. In turn, Riley and Owen confirmed, yes, it was. Work on the platform resumed with a sense of excited purpose.

With the completed platform aboard, Alec brought his ancient, rusting mooring barge alongside the osprey pole. The next step —how to safely and securely fasten the new frame to the top of a 20-foot pole on a chilly, overcast spring day in the middle of Tashmoo — would not be straightforward. In addition to contending with the wind and tide, the remaining framework cross-pieces were uneven, requiring some on-the-spot adjustments.

Alec’s ability to improvise, Reid’s civil engineering skills and two fearless teenage boys willing to climb an extension ladder propped against a pole, holding a cordless drill and a pocket full of long Timberlok screws, while also being surrounded by water, were up to the challenge.

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Ospreys are a common sight across the Island and New England. Catching a glimpse of an osprey as it stops, hovers, folds back its wings and dives into the water with outstretched talons to emerge and fly away with a struggling fish is an exciting experience.

But half a century ago, the population was in serious trouble throughout its range due to the effects of the pesticide DDT, which was banned in 1972. There were only two nesting pairs on the Island when ornithologist Richard O. (Rob) Bierregaard Jr. began studying ospreys in 1971. There are now more than 140 nesting pairs, as of the 2025 count. Their resurgence owes much to the leadership of Gus Ben David and the work of many volunteers and private landowners, and continuing efforts to erect osprey poles near the fish-rich shallows of the Island’s saltponds, marshes and bays. 

“Chappaquiddick is the osprey capital of Martha’s Vineyard,” Mr. Bierregaard said. “There are 25 pairs on Chappy.”

The uppermost cove of Tashmoo, where numerous ospreys build their nests in their preferred habitat of the tops of broken trees, or on poles provided for them, and the chimney of the historic pumping station, is home to about nine pairs.

Mr. Bierregaard said some nest sites have been in continuous use for decades. 

“One bird dies and gets replaced, and then the other one dies and gets replaced,” he said. “So you have this serial replacement going on, which means that sometimes the nest can be occupied like the one at Mink Meadows Beach, for 50 years.”

Ospreys lay one to four eggs that typically hatch in late May or early June. Starting in late August, adult female ospreys leave Massachusetts and head south for warmer areas, mostly in South America, although a few underachievers decide Florida is all the south they need. Males leave in early September, which is also when the young of the year begin their first migrations south — on their own with nothing but an instinct to head south and stay over land if possible, Mr. Bierregaard said. 

“If they can’t stay over land, they just head out over whatever body of water is in their way. That simple program gets a naive osprey to South America via Florida or the Bahamas through Cuba and over the Caribbean.”

It is a remarkable journey. In July 2010, Mr. Bierregaard attached a small transmitter to a 10-week-old Tashmoo osprey he named Belle, who that first year flew across the Atlantic from Martha’s Vineyard to the Bahamas, a non-stop trip of nearly 1,200 miles. Over the seven years that the transmitter continued to send signals, Belle completed six migrations, mostly between the Island and Brazil, a round-trip of 8,000 miles. 

Mr. Bierregaard chronicled the experiment in Belle’s Journey, An Osprey Takes Flight, an illustrated book for young students and anyone interested in ospreys.

Hank’s determination to remain on the Tashmoo osprey pole the entire last season was not unusual. 

“Real estate’s hard to come by, so you don’t want to let squatters come in,” Mr. Bierregaard said.

Mr. Bierregaard said that if only one osprey returns, for example if the female dies on migration, the male sets up on the nest that he has been using for years, and will start seeking to attract a mate.

“And if his old female comes back, he’ll just get right down to business with her,” Mr. Bierregaard said. “But if she doesn’t show up, he’ll start advertising. And, if a young female shows up who’s interested in him, they’ll start courting.”

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Back on the dock, Owen and Riley agreed that, after last summer, they wanted to do something to help the osprey. 

“I felt bad for it,” Riley said

“It was so sad seeing the osprey last year, you know, with no nest,” Owen said. “Every time you leave the harbor, you can see it up there… and you see the chicks in the beginning of the year and see them grow up. It’s just such a cool bird.”

He added, “I think we’ve given it the best shot we could to get started.”

Alec, who’s spent his life on the water, said that for Islanders, seeing the ospreys return lets you know that: “Finally, winter’s over.”

Alec added, “After seeing that osprey all sad all summer, I had to do something. I mean, that bird was pretty sad.”

Over the coming weeks, Tashmoo will echo with the high-pitched chirps and squeals of returning osprey as they whirl and dive in aerial courtship rituals called sky dances and battle to reclaim traditional nest sites.

Hank, who returned that morning with a talon full of nest-building materials to reclaim the Tashmoo osprey pole, will join the dance.

Video of Tashmoo osprey.

Nelson Sigelman lives in Vineyard Haven.

This article appears in April 3, 2026.