"GLOUCESTER POINT, Va. — Stepping onto an old wooden duck blind in the middle of the York River, Bryan Watts looks down at a circle of sticks and pine cones on the weathered, guano-spattered platform. It’s a failed osprey nest, taken over by diving terns.
“The birds never laid here this year,” said Watts, near the mouth of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. “And that’s a pattern we’ve been seeing these last couple of years.”
Watts has a more intimate relationship with ospreys than most people have with a bird — he has climbed to their nests to free them from plastic bags, fed them by hand and monitored their eggs with telescopic mirrors.
The fish-eating raptor known for gymnastic dives and whistle-like chirps is an American conservation success story. After pesticides and other hazards nearly eliminated the species from much of the country, the hawk-like bird rebounded after the banning of DDT in 1972 and now numbers in the thousands in the U.S."
Patrick Whittle and Allen G. Breed report for the Associated Press July 12, 2025.
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