Area residents fill Annex gym
to celebrate osprey's resurgence
By Back To
Community Events of Westport
Staff Writer – Courtesy of the Dartmouth
Chronicle
August 08, 2007 6:00 AM
WESTPORT — Westport residents came out to
'Celebrate Our Osprey' Wednesday night, with a large crowd filling all the
available seats in the Town Hall Annex gymnasium. The theme of the evening was
all things osprey, and special guests Alan Poole and David Gessner
brought that theme to life.
Before the guest speakers addressed the
crowd, Gina Purtell, director of Mass. Audubon's
Allen's Pond Sanctuary gave brief introductions and noted that Westport is one
of the few places in the world that has a studied and nurtured population of
osprey
Wednesday night's celebration was "an
opportunity we're grateful for," she suggested, indicating the area was
lucky to have such knowledgeable and talented speakers attending the forum.
The first speaker, Alan Poole, has long
studied, nurtured and admired the osprey. A resident of Dartmouth, Mr. Poole is
the author of the leading book on ospreys, "Ospreys — A Natural and
Unnatural History."
He opened his brief remarks by saying,
"It's great to see so many people here tonight; it's great to see the
interest."
He suggested that seeing ospreys in the wild
and being involved with them is one of the beauties of living in this area.
Mr. Poole indicated that the Westport River
Watershed Alliance (WRWA), Mass. Audubon and others involved have created an
excellent model of how protecting and serving these sea hawks should work.
"(We've) pulled together a model of how conservation can and should
work," he said.
He added that the projects have involved a
vast variety of people and professions. The biologists, professional land
managers and volunteers have created a "wonderful mix of people coming
in," Mr. Poole suggested, adding that the people involved have "saved
one of the important parts of the river."
Mr. Poole also spoke about how conservation
would not have been possible without one particular characteristic of the
osprey: their tolerance. "Ospreys are tremendously tolerant of the kind of
disturbances we as a society bring," he said regarding the congestion of
people alongside and on the water in the Westport River.
Along with the osprey's tolerance comes
their adaptability. According to Mr. Poole, the ospreys have "proved
remarkably adaptable." With the depletion of many of their choice fish,
ospreys have proven they can live on a variety of other fish.
As far as hunting goes, the male osprey does
all of the hunting while the female does the feeding and tends the nest. Each
male catches about three or four fish per day to feed his family.
Though the osprey and their families are
only in Westport for five months per year, they are a very active five months.
The osprey's time spent here is very tumultuous from their arrival, when they
concentrate on building nests, feeding themselves and their mates, taking care
of the eggs, and feeding the hatchlings and preparing them for the long flight
to South America.
The sea hawks are "most vulnerable
during the period when young are hatching," according to Mr. Poole. One
particular hazard that endangers the chances of producing living offspring is
early spring rain. Too much rain in a period of consecutive days provides for
bad hunting and colder nests, and too many consecutive rainy days can kill up
to half of the osprey's young.
Fortunately for the osprey, the spring and
summer of 2007 have been much drier than those of 2006. In 2006 there were 206
osprey eggs laid, 109 hatched, and only 48 fledglings survived. This year there
were 232 eggs laid, 145 hatched and 130 fledglings survived.
These numbers only reflect the osprey
populations in and around the Westport River, but as special guest David Gessner elaborated, these osprey that nest on the river
only stay here temporarily. They too, like many people, journey great distances
to their winter homes in the south, and Mr. Gessner
has journeyed with them.
Originally from Cape Cod, Mr. Gessner teaches creative writing at University of North
Carolina at Wilmington and has authored two books about ospreys: "The
Return of the Osprey — A Season of Flight and Wonder" and his current
book, "Soaring with Fidel — An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and
Beyond".
"The first book is very much about the
home season," he said, whereas the second book, "Soaring with
Fidel," is about the home and the journey between the two places. The
second chronicles Mr. Gessner's own journey, starting
in Cape Cod and taking him through Westport, Long Island, Hawk
Mountain Pennsylvania, down the east coast, through Cuba and into Lake
Valencia, Venezula.
He said their migrations were very
individual, each bird having it's own personality; one
bird went north to Portland, Maine before heading south towards South America,
he noted. Sadly, only about one-third of the birds survive the trip down and
back.
Mr. Gessner
expressed that one of the joys of the trip, and a main component of the book,
was the tribe of people he met along the way. "Part of the idea of the
trip was uniting the osprey tribe," he suggested.
One individual he met while on his journey
was famed local osprey advocate Gil Fernandez. Mr. Gessner
read an excerpt from his book citing Gil's comment during their meeting—
"any friend of the ospreys is a friend of mine." This one sentence
helps describe the osprey tribe— those who care about ospreys and care about
each other.
As Mr. Gessner
admitted the book, "Soaring with Fidel," is not simply about the
birds or their journey, but more about the people you would meet on that
journey. "The book became as much about the birders as the bird," he
said.
"I had a feeling of discovery," he
added of the project. In closing, Mr. Gessner told
his audience it's hard to stop writing about the birds because they're
connected to everything else.
Earlier in the event, a similar sentiment
about that connectedness had been mentioned by Alan Poole, who described the
overwhelming connection he felt when working with the osprey. It was easy for
him to imagine for a few moments that he was an early native of this land, he
suggested, because "there's a great flowing of life that takes place here
in mid-summer."
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