It’s breeding season for our Ospreys in South Australia and there’s activity on a range of new artificial platforms as well as historic nesting platforms around our state’s coastline.
We believe our first platform at Wills Creek Conservation Park has an active nest, building on last year’s success, while there is also activity at Gleesons Landing and around other sites. As the weeks pass we will learn more about what is happening at the various sites we are monitoring and we hope that our artificial platforms will start at to build real conservation dividends for our Osprey.
However, what we do know is that there are eggs and/or chicks on the two nests we monitor via video link: the Port Lincoln Barge nest and the new artificial platform on Tumby Island Conservation Park at Tumby Bay. Both nests are on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.
Activity from the Port Lincoln Barge nest (which was the catalyst for the formation of Friends of Osprey) is broadcast on the Port Lincoln Osprey Facebook page and this Facebook page also includes updates from the Tumby Island nest as well. It is updated very regularly.
Our video stream from the Tumby Island nest has been hindered by an unusually bleak winter/spring in South Australia meaning that our webcam has been failing to charge, however it came back alive on 23 September 2022 and we discovered there are two eggs on this new nesting platform. In 2021 the nest was the victim of fox predation (just days before we had hoped to see hatchlings emerge!), an act which was caught on the webcam. This drove the Friends of Osprey to install an artificial nesting platform on this sight, placing the ground level nest on the elevated structure and away from most dangers. It appears this is proving successful already.
Keep an eye on this blog for more information about the 2022 breeding season as it unfolds. We are hopeful it will be a fruitful one for Ospreys in South Australia.