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Welcome to “Season Three” of our osprey cam! Get ready for another exciting season of osprey viewing at the Waquoit Bay Reserve, brought to you by the Friends of Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge
If you’d like to show your appreciation for the nest cam, please Support the Friends of Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge! As a nonprofit volunteer organization, we support a wide variety of education, research and stewardship projects within the Mashpee Refuge to ensure the long-term protection and enhancement of native wildlife and habitats.
Thank you in advance!
We are thrilled to offer this live stream of an active pair of Osprey at their nest at Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. The pair are appropriately named Rachel and Carson, after the famed environmentalist.
This opportunity for a bird’s eye view of a beloved bird’s habitat is the result of a collaboration between The Friends of Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge, which helped plan and locate the site for this unique “nest cam,” the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, one of the Refuge partners, and Comcast, which generously provided the equipment, installation and broadband connectivity to power this viewing experience.
One of our goals as a community-based nonprofit is to give the public opportunities to enjoy and interact with nature and wildlife. Thanks to Comcast, the live streaming of this osprey nest will broaden our reach to all of Cape Cod and beyond. We are grateful for the opportunity to use the live nest cam for observation, research and education purposes.
View highlights from 2024 (“Season Three”)
View highlights from 2023 (“Season Two”)
View highlights from last year (“Season One”) – mating, egg laying and hatching, feeding and more!
Please feel free to comment below with your observations or any questions you may have. We welcome your comments and questions! If you’d like to see a list of questions other viewers have asked, please see our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Ospreys and the Nest Cam. You may also want to read this article to learn more about ospreys on Cape Cod.
Please note that first-time posters must be approved before comments are displayed, and allow up to 24 hours before your initial post can be seen by others.
Good grief! After shot #3, our view is nearly completely obliterated. Nothing much we can do except wait it out and hope for rain. There’s none in the forecast until at least Tuesday night, so I guess we just watch the fireworks instead of the ospreys. We will definitely learn from this for next year!
I am going to be so disappointed if we miss them flying for the first time. They look so close to taking off when they stand and flap their wings – getting stronger all the time
Holy Moly!!! We going to need more that a little rain storm to clean the lens.
What little darling is responsible for this bullseye?
Oh no! The cam just got pooped again! About 3:43 pm. Sigh.
Arrgggh! That one must have been dead center to take out the whole nest view.
yup and it covered the whole lens. what a bummer!!
Glenn, 13:00 feeding, as usual the little one is of by itself waiting while the other two gorge. At about 13:20 the middle chick (I think) makes off with an oversized bite of fish, carries it to the left front of the nest and drops it. Meanwhile the little one is watching and casually steps over and grabs the oversized bite. Ironic yet hilarious I thought……..
Great Screenshot!!!!!
I added the second poop shot on the highlights reel (this time in slo-mo!). Luckily it wasn’t as bad as the first time. Someone had asked what the odds are of this happening twice… given how frequently they must go (times 5 birds) I think the question is, what are the chances of the lens never being hit? Next year, we’ll have to do some repositioning of the camera to avoid this. Though I do like the idea of a washer system!
now you can add a 3rd lol 07/03/22 at 3.44pm (15:3:44) Good grief
Hi Glenn, any chance you could add surferboy’s viewing of feeding activity from today 7/3 13:00-13:20 of little one going for scraps of fish siblings left behind…Thanks!!!
Finally got this one posted. It’s a pretty long segment of a close-up feeding. Sorry there’s not much we can see on the live view. Happy 4th everyone!
Wonderful
Mom’s back. Moving a big twig from the edge of the nest. Looks like she is making more room for the young ones to move around in.
Big bird was trying out her wings. Lots of flapping and turning. She may be the first to fly. Exciting! Meanwhile, her siblings were enjoying the view over the edge of the nest, sitting quietly side by side, as if there was nothing going on behind them. Such a joy to watch these three! 🙂
Someone needs to build a webcam with a washer……….with all the osprey webcams it’s needed, obviously.
Just saw Carson bring in a fish. When Rachel went over to get it, Carson was still holding on and they had a little tug of war. This was a little before 9:30 am.
OMG almost shot the poop at the camera again but just missed yippee
10:47 AM feeding. Did anyone see who brought this fish to the nest? Thinking it might have been the female.
I saw the fish get delivered, but two of the 3 babies were flapping their wings and both Carson and Rachel were in the nest So I am not sure who it was
Thank You Joanne, had to have been the male if he was present.
4th of July feast just delivered to the hungry crew !!
What are the chances of shooting the poop twice and hitting the camera? lol
Apparently at least twice as high as we thought the chances were the first time the camera got pooped on. 🙂
now it’s up to 3 poop shots! last one perfectly covered the whole lens. Bummer
Approx 10:40 AM Saturday, a chick took a pot shot at the camera and hit it.
Maybe some RainX for the camera lens 😜
10:38 am – Camera hit again with poop shoot. Not as bad as first one; lens may be wet which helped it slide off. Definitely need to move the camera for next year. Glenn, Maybe you can post it as a “highlight.”
I was watching a kept telling the chick “no no” but like so many other youngsters he didn’t listen. lol
7/2/2022, 10:38AM, lens got pooped on again! Saw the bigger chick lining up to take out the camera.
Poor #3 got another stick dropped on its head when Carson arrived with it about 10 minutes earlier.
Is Carson tracking Rachel or an intruder? He’s being very vocal and the chicks have been pancaking like there might be a threat.
Glenn, I started watching about 8AM 7/2. Female was perched on left front of nest. At one point I said to myself her necklace looks way more pronounced maybe cause she is wet. Sure enough at about 8:20 the real Mother swoops in and the “heavy necklace” bolts. Check out the footage and shows us when Mother leaves and visitor arrives. T Y!!!!!
Found the following info – the two older chicks are past the 30 days now, but not near the 55 days just yet! Looks like we can keep watching them for awhile still:
Within 30 days of hatching, the young birds will be 70-75% of their adult weight. The chicks will fledge about 55 days after hatching but will use the nest as home base until they migrate in September. Young ospreys will stay dependent on their parents until the young are able to fish for themselves. The female adult usually migrates first, while the male adult remains behind to help the young with fishing. The male will migrate about the same time as the young, which is a few weeks after the mother, depending on the chicks’ development.
https://www.friendsofblackwater.org/osprey-facts.html#:~:text=Within%2030%20days%20of%20hatching,able%20to%20fish%20for%20themselves.
Thanks Ellen for all this information about our chicks schedule. So glad we have at least 2 months more with them!! I will truly miss watching our feathered family.
Nice how big they are. Sometimes grabbing food themselves and practicing nest building lol
One of them was stretching its wing way way out and fell over. Think maybe they will fly this month?
Tonight at 858 can clearly see that egg that never hatched. Surprised to see it still there.
The egg really stands out under the night light!
sometimes when they get to flapping their wings, they look like they are going to lift themselves right up into the air
Rachel is finishing feeding the chicks right now. All have gotten portions, and show nice crops!
The little one always is left out. 😢
Don’t worry about #3– it’s doing just fine! There’s plenty of fish to feed everybody so nobody is going hungry. 🙂
Chicks are starting to help with housekeeping duties!
moving sticks around, looked like they were practicing nest building
Rachel looks so thin compared to what she was when she started this journey
I never really noticed, but just saw her fly to the nest and yes I agree she looks a lot different then she did even two weeks ago.
Thanks Karen!
12:25 am Rachel is outside the central nest area. Not enough room for her anymore. The chicks grow quickly.
Does anyone know if Rachel lays in the nest with the chicks at night? I go to bed pretty early and she is always sitting on the side of the nest at my last peek of the day.
I often see her sitting on the edge of the nest late at night, not actually in it anymore. Getting kind of crowded!
In fact, that is where Rachel is right now, at 10 pm, while the chicks are sleeping!
No dinner yet. Been watching since 7:15pm
Egg is in the middle again…
Watching how crowded nest space is becoming, I started to wonder what the possibilities are that somebody is pushed to the ground. What happens then?
Just read in CCTimes Falmouth Osprey nest destroyed by electrical fire killing chicks Monday night. So terrible. Glad our osprey family is safe and thriving.
This is so sad. You might want to skip reading the article in the CCTimes — it will make you feel terrible! Even sadder is that this is the 3rd year in a row this has happened to this pair of ospreys. 🙁
Seems like the breast feathers are the last to grow out. Alpha chick’s feathers look nice and full whereas Chick #3,who is a week younger, is still almost bare breasted.
It’s amazing how quickly they grow
Rachel now has the tail section and is feeding the other two.
Now a second chick feeds it self 8:03
8 A.M. Alpha chick is feeding itself on tail section of leftover fish…it’s near egg #4.
C1 is self feeding — and having NO problem tearing into the fish!
Now 1 and 2 are self feeding on the same chunk of fish.
Now Rachel is feeding 2 and 3.
It’s interesting that C2 tried to tear the fish with its beak, but didn’t have the instinct to grip the fish with his/her talons to hold it in place. C1 knew how to do it just like Rachel.
Glen, for the highlights, 7:56 AM one of the chicks is clearly feeding itself. Have not seen this before.
Got it – thanks to everyone for posting the times!