BROADCAST: Thursday June 25, 2:30 PM

Michael Academia and SuzAnne Miller will provide an update on all 12 nests that are part of the Awesome Osprey Project, discuss the next steps for the project, and introduce the July book club series featuring the book "Soaring with Fidel" by David Gessner. SERIES: Awesome Osprey Project / Learning Adventure: Osprey Photography

Michael Academia has been a very busy man keeping track of all the action happening across the 12 osprey nests included in the project. He will bring us all up to date on the chick hatchings and the fish delivers to help us make sense of it all. Watching multiple osprey nests in multiple locations is certainly expanding our understanding of challenges ospreys face to raise a family.

Not only are we going to update all of you on what is happening at the nest, but we are going to turn to you to help us understand your participation and involvement with the Awesome Osprey Project. This is the first time that Dunrovin has conducted a project with multiple web cameras that progresses over a multiple-month period. We are anxious to learn from you about how this experience has been in your eyes. What is working well for you? What have you learned? How can we improves the project for future years?

Michael and SuzAnne will kick off a week-long "focus group" discussion via the Discussion Board, the Chat Room, and the following week's broadcast to give all of you an opportunity to help us "get it right" so we can learn as much as possible from this experience to inform future efforts. Please help us by chiming in!

July is around the corner, which means that we can expect to see the bucket truck drive down the road to lift the scientists up to the nest to band our little chick, Lucky. Dunrovin is a strong supporter of bird banding as it is an extremely important tool for scientists to learn about the migration patterns, habitats, and life history of birds. Such information is critical for managing natural resources in ways that will promote the health of bird populations. In fact, recent conversations with the scientists who have been banding ospreys in western Montana for a number of years tell us that banded chicks from the Dunrovin nest have been sighted and photographed more that any other group of banded ospreys, indicating that Dunrovin's chicks my be experiencing higher rates of survival during their first years. Congratulations to Harriet and her mates on their ability to raise such successful chicks!

Dunrovin has yet to hear the final word as to when the scientists will come to the ranch to band Lucky, but we will be sure to alert all of you once we have that information. In the meantime, enjoy some photos of previous years' banding activities.

 

Awesome Osprey Book Club

Get ready for a great read! Dunrovin will restart the D@D Book Club with a book inspired by ospreys and written by an nationally acclaimed author: Soaring with Fidel; An Odyssey from Cape Code to Cuba and Beyond by David Gessner.

While David's book is chock full great biological and natural history information and beautifully written descriptions of ospreys in that will make your heart sing, the main focus of the book is the impact that the ospreys' have had on the people who have come to appreciate them. It is, in ways, a love story for ospreys. Those of us who have spent years watching these magnificent birds will find ourselves in this book.

You have plenty of time to acquire the book before the book club starts. The book will be read and discussed by chapters . During the month of July, each AOP Thursday  broadcast at 2:30 PM  will focus on successive chapters with a full book discussion at the end:

Thursday, July 9th: Chapters 1 through 4

Thursday, July 16th: Chapters 5 through 7

Thursday, July 23rd,: Chapters 8 through 10 plus the Postlude

Thursday, July 30: the entire book discussed with special guests

Broadcast Recording from June 25, 2020, 2:30 PM MDT: 

Awesome Osprey Project 06-25-2020 from dunrovincams on Vimeo.