Dubuque Osprey Program Taking Flight

By MARY RAE BRAGG

Donate camera? The Dubuque County Conservation Board is looking for someone to donate a camera to monitor the young ospreys while in their new home. It would transmit pictures to an Internet site or to a screen at the Mud Lake pavilion. Call 563-556-6745 to help. News You can use Osprey facts Some things you might not have known about ospreys 3 Large, narrow-winged raptors, ospreys weigh between 2.5 and 4.5 pounds, with 6-foot wing spans. 3 An osprey’s wing is narrower than an eagle’s and curves backward at the wrist, like the wing of a gull. 3 The only raptor with closing nose flaps that allow them to completely submerge, they can easily spot a fish underwater from a height of 100 feet. 3 They are able to swivel the outside talon, allowing them to clamp fish two toes by two toes, and specialized joints at the wing wrists help them lift vertically out of the water. 3 Ospreys show strong fidelity to ancestral breeding areas and return to areas they originate from. 3 The Dubuque project is the 10th and final one in the Iowa Department of Natural Resources osprey reintroduction program, the only one on the Mississippi River. 3 Pesticide use plummeted the continental osprey population in the 1950s, but after a ban on DDT in 1972, their number gradually increased to 14,109 pairs tallied in 1994. — Source: Iowa Department of Natural Resources

One day this summer, you could be walking or boating along the Mississippi River backwaters north of Dubuque when suddenly out of the sky will come a hawk-like bird, plunging into the water at 40 mph.

It will disappear under the waves and soon after shoot back up into the air, seeming to ride on the fish grasped perpendicularly in its talons.

Behold the marvelous Pandion haliaetus.

Better known as ospreys, the amazing fish hawk or fish eagle performs unlike any raptor common to Dubuqueland. But if all goes as planned, it won’t be long until their sleek feeding maneuver will be an everyday occurrence up and down Dubuque’s Mississippi River valley.

A Dubuque County osprey restoration project got under way Thursday morning with introduction of four 42-day-old osprey chicks to their new home – a “hack box” placed high above the Mississippi River backwaters at Mud Lake Park.

Dozens of people, most of whom are directly responsible for bringing the osprey to Dubuque, were on hand to welcome the young birds.

Still 10-15 days away from trying their wings, the two males and two females received physicals from veterinarian Mary Lynn Neumeister and Sherry Moore. Wings dabbed with orange, pink, green or yellow paint for easy identification, the ospreys were carried from cages to their new home.

Pat Schlarbaum, wildlife diversity program technician for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in Boone, said the paint should wear off by September, when the birds begin their southern migration. Immature ospreys will spend up to 18 months at the wintering sites in Central and South America.

Brought to Dubuque from their hatching nest in northern Wisconsin, the birds’new home is an 8-by-8 wooden hack built by county conservation department staff. It sits high above ground on a deck with stairs, on 40-foot utility poles set by Alliant Energy. The stairway’s lower portion is hinged to raise up and the poles are wrapped in metal, to prevent unwelcome visits from people or raccoons.

The hack’s river-facing side is a gate that will be lower when the birds are deemed ready to fly. Food and water will be delivered by way of drawers, and a one-way glass window donated by Zephyr Aluminum Products allows volunteer feeders to check on the birds without being seen.

Brian Preston, Dubuque County Conservation Board director, said two periods of flooding made it difficult for construction workers and equipment to get into the site and have it ready in time for the birds’arrival.

“It was a challenge but they did an awesome job,” Preston said. “This is why you get involved in conservation.”

Eight and nine years ago, Dubuque County conservationists introduced Peregrine falcons at Eagle Point Park. That project’s graduates have been found as far away as an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, Preston said, and there are recent unsubstantiated reports of a Peregrine nesting on Dubuque’s Iowa-Wisconsin bridge.

The audience greeting the ospreys included Barb Anderson and Stephanie Yager, faculty sponsors for Roosevelt Middle School students’Sierra Society, which sponsored one osprey, and students from the University of Dubuque’s Web of Life environmental club.

The UD club raised $2,050 for the project, including $1,000 for the hack and the balance for two birds, one this year and one next year. Contributors also included the Dubuque and national chapters of the Audubon Society.

Frances Eggers, a UD senior and Web of Life member, agreed it was an “awesome” project to support. A biology and environmental science major from Teed’s Grove, Iowa, Eggers said helping restore wildlife in the Mississippi River valley is something of a tradition in her family.

“When they were young, my parents helped reintroduce trumpeter swans near Clinton,” Eggers said. “It’s really fun being part of introducing birds like they did.”

Originally published by MARY RAE BRAGG TH staff writer/ mbragg@wcinetcom.

(c) 2008 Telegraph – Herald (Dubuque). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.