WESTPORT —
In August or September, when three osprey who call Westport their seasonal home migrate to South America, their paths will be tracked on an hourly basis through small transmitters on their backs. The data will be posted online and be used in Grade 3 classes to teach students about migration and wildlife behavior.“If we can figure out where these birds are going, maybe it’s a community like ours,” said Becky Cushing, the volunteer coordinator and osprey monitor for Mass Audubon’s Allens Pond Wildlife Sanctuary.
The Westport River Watershed Alliance and Allens Pond, who maintain about 80 osprey breeding platforms along the lower Westport River and Buzzards Bay shore, have also been tracking where the three osprey — all males, because they catch most of the food — catch their fish locally.
Two of them often find fish at the upper east branch of the river, which Cushing said indicates a high fish population. The other osprey goes to Narragansett Bay, she said.
The ospreys who fly to Westport each March spend their winters in or around Venezuela, said Gay Gillespie, the watershed alliance’s executive director, though one was once found in Paraguay, much further south. Adult ospreys make the trip each year but young ospreys spend their first few years in the warmer climate, Cushing said. The birds can be identified by metal bands tracing them to Westport.
Ospreys are closely studied but are still mysterious, said Gina Purtell, the sanctuary director at Allens Pond. The birds, whose habitat can be identified by the wooden breeding platforms, can act as “ambassadors” for the public to learn more about other birds and how different hemispheres, as well as land and sea, are connected, she said.
About 160 ospreys are believed to spend the summers around the Westport River to breed. Many young ospreys don’t survive their initial migration south, Purtell said.
