What to Do For a Lonely Osprey

November 4, 2010

Question: We keep our sailboat in the Alamitos Bay Marina and recently have been seeing an osprey perching on another sailboat mast across from ours. This same bird was there last year and there was another osprey flying around with him. This year he is the only one there and he just cries and cries and gets no answer. My husband is very worried about him. Is there anyone we can talk to about this? (Lois and Chuck M.)

Answer: You can assure your husband that there’s no reason to worry about this lone osprey you’re seeing. According to Department of Fish and Game (DFG) Seabird Biologist Laird Henkel, although osprey are typically monogamous, after their breeding season (probably in the Pacific Northwest for these birds) concludes each year, the two members of a pair will separate and migrate to different wintering sites. Since only limited nesting is known to occur in southern California, any osprey you may see during the winter in your region are likely migrating or just wintering there locally. Because of this, the two birds you saw last year were almost certainly not a mated pair. It’s also unlikely they were a parent / juvenile pair as juveniles also migrate separately from their parents.

The second bird you saw last year may be around again this winter but just in a different part of the bay, or it may have been a bird that has died since last year.

Osprey can live for more than 20 years and will typically return to the same wintering site year after year, so you may end up seeing this same individual on your neighbor’s mast for years to come. Osprey will call for a variety of reasons, but most typically if they are annoyed or they are announcing their territory (including a winter feeding territory) to other birds. It’s hard to say what the “crying” you hear might mean, but I’ll bet the bird is not calling for its missing “friend.”