It has been quite a day in Ospreyland. It is going to take me a few days to recover from all the excitement and tension.
The osprey chick that was placed as a foster chick yesterday, after falling out of a barn silo, fell out of the Patuxent nest of its foster parents around 19:15 nest time this evening. Many citizen birders watching the streaming cam were shocked but had enough wits about them to go into action. They first wrote of the incident on chat. There was not an emergency number so all the wildlife numbers in Maryland were tried including the Wildlife Emergency Line.
The chick was rescued and placed back in the nest at 21:12:54. Here is that moment:
Wet but home!
One of the chatters mentioned the chick going over the side. That and all the phone calls to the Wildlife Services got people moving. I want to acknowledge the good work of S Shen who brought this up on the chat. S Shen wrote to me to get me to call because she was worried about this chick and she had tried the park office and it was closed. I did phone the Emergency Wildlife services. But a round of applause. S Shen has some of the sharpest eyes I know watching these cameras and noting – the good and the bad. She immediately moves into action. This is what was said about their notifications and the team effort that went into action:
“4:05 AMTom O’ConnellA big thank you to S Shen and the community of people that came together to notify officials &assisted in rescuing this chick. Great work everyone! USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center Director.”
I understand that these chicks cannot fly out of the water yet but they can float. The hope is that they do not ingest too much water.
Thanks to everyone who made this a happy ending! Round of applause for S Shen.
Thanks to the Patuxent River Osprey Cam 2 where I took my screen shots.