The osprey, once a seriously threatened Vineyard bird, has made a significant recovery. The osprey population on the Vineyard has doubled and doubled again in recent years.
Naturalist Gus Ben David has handled everything from gigantic snakes to enormous birds of prey, but the latest creature under his care is less intimidating and quite a bit more endearing: a baby osprey recently rescued on Chappaquiddick. Mr. Ben David has been feeding and housing the small raptor.
The 2014 inventory found there were 119 active osprey nests on the Island. If I did my math correctly, we had 63 successful nests.
It’s been a record-breaking year for Vineyard osprey, the majestic raptor that now nests on the Island in greater numbers than ever before.
Home to only two breeding pairs in 1970, the Island can now count 83 such pairs of osprey among its avian residents.
Gus Ben David and crew’s osprey poles are now the proud surfaces on which 83 osprey pairs are nesting.
Rob Bierregaard was introduced to the Vineyard’s osprey population by Gus Ben David and has been studying the Vineyard’s ospreys since the 1960s.
Three baby osprey chicks are being hand raised by Gus Ben David in Edgartown following an accident aloft over Chappaquiddick last Thursday. The birds, which are about two weeks old, fell from their nest when the electrical pole that held them and their nest caught fire. Suddenly homeless, the three little birds were rescued by NStar crews and turned over to Mr. Ben David, a noted naturalist and owner of the World of Reptiles and Bird Park off the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road.
