Time of Dissolution for Chesapeake Osprey

The longtime pair of this nest are brooding their 2023 eggs well past a viable hatch date. (Photo by V.Volk)

Dissolution: the closing down or dismissal of an assembly, partnership, or official body.

It is the Time of Dissolution in the Chesapeake’s osprey season. For the seven nests in Island Creek, visible through a telescope at Sea-Fruit Oyster House, disastrous weather dreadfully timed left only two nests with chicks this season.

Two pairs never laid an egg. Or maybe eggs rolled out of their inadequate nests.

Two pairs had been diligently brooding eggs nearly three weeks when late April storms forced them off their nests. Crows got the eggs. Both pairs tooled-up for a second go, no easy task dropping  sexual organs back into production position all over again, then gearing up the hormones, all over again, then going at it, the whole operation unequipped to hold up even half as long as before.

By the Time of Dissolution these two pairs had given every thing they could. Twice. And it proved inadequate. They’d need be brooding by now for a second-chance clutch to succeed. Odds don’t favor hatches after 4^th of July.

Imagine, untethered from every driving instinct in your being. The object of every roaring, full-steam-ahead instinct – brooding, feeding, teaching, feeding, fledging, feeding, and teaching – is absent.

Sheered of months of 24-hour duty, do they join the kettle of osprey soaring above Island Creek? Who wouldn’t accept a summer sailing Chesapeake air currents as recompense?

Well, not the pair on North Nest 1, who remained riven to their nest during the apocalyptic April storms; he likely hunkered beside her, they’re unusually  tight. They arrive together each year, perform tandem aerial dancing, get down to the business of successful parenting. In that tradition, they’ve yet to leave those eggs unattended, even as their Time of Dissolution arrived a few weeks ago.

Viable osprey eggs hatch within a 34- to 43-day window. While counting has proven a solid indicator for birdwatchers, theories abound about how, when, or even if birds realize their eggs won’t hatch. More firmly established theories suggest birds regulate by astrological time, such as hours of sunlight signaling migration. Maybe Chesapeake osprey sitting on dud eggs won’t suspect the jig is up until the 4^th of July.

As limiting – and boring – as brooding must be, it does keep the female’s meal ticket valid. Pairs untethered from their nests are negotiating: Will He still keep delivering fish to Her? Must She continue to beg Him for fish if there are no young to train? Would taking up Tandem Flying help their relationship?

The nest, however, is never negotiable. Neither osprey intends to give up the nest. Death or physical defeat from an outside challenger are the ways osprey separate from their nests. So, the chick-free couples may fish for themselves, fly solo, perch at different ends of their territories, but one or both will always be near enough to dive into their nest if an intruder gets too close.

The dozens of osprey around Island Creek know their nests are surveilled by marauding youngsters, male and female, coveting these ready-made nests, making no secret of their intent. As if taking dares from one another they circle with fish in their talons, dangle their feet into nests at head-level to the occupants. All of this drives the nesting osprey nuts.

Alerts of any intruder travel up and down the creek, chasing the prowlers out of established territories. But the youngsters double back, sweep about, they’re away, they’re out of sight. They’ll be back. Within hours. Or days. And definitely next year. Perhaps already with designs on a specific nest with an aging osprey whose mate might accept a younger osprey going forward.