Raptor Alignment

Aligned through the new Osprey nesting platform at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s ghost of Pier 4 is the 55 Water Street Peregrine scrape across the East River. It’s too late for Ospreys to nest here this season, but the falcons have three young (maybe four by now). You can spy on the falcons here; note, they might be underneath the bird now, but they grow up fast.

This year’s crop of local Ospreys may note this platform before heading south. Established pairs reunite at their previous nesting sites, but unpaired birds in the spring will be on the look-out for place of their own. Males usually arrive early and stake out a location. Are there enough sticks available to build a nest here? Lots of driftwood gets caught up in the rocks here, so maybe.

A couple of Ospreys have been satellite-tracked from our own Jamaica Bay and further up the coast on Nantucket for a few years now: both take roughly two weeks to fly down to Colombia and then about two weeks to fly back up here, unerringly making it back to their nests.