Harriet arrived! She seems to be in excellent shape after her long migration north. I first saw her on Monday. Here she is imperiously reigning over her nest yesterday. Both she and Ozzie have been very busy since she arrived. Their two principal activities have been almost-constant copulating when they’re together and fixing up the nest. It seems that they’ve gotten their evolutionary priorities right.
Ozzie has been doing most of the fixer-up foraging for repair materials: principally collecting new branches for the nest’s siding and gobs of moss for its new floor. Here he is returning with a branch. Both Ozzie and Harriet also have been rearranging some of the older branches that form the almost 100-foot-high nest. The old place had gotten a bit catawampus from the winter winds.
Harriet already has been spending most of her time in the nest, while Ozzie is leaving it more and more. This is typical. Yesterday, for the first time that I’ve heard, she started what’s called osprey “solicitation calling” while Ozzie was away. This calling is a form of routine, high-pitched begging (some would say “nagging”) by females for food and/or attention from their mates:
The females seem to know that they’ll be spending much of their time in the nest and usually will be dependent on the males’ delivery of the fish that will feed them and the pair’s nestlings. The females’ initial soliciting may be an evolved attempt to establish a necessary routine with their males before life for everyone gets more complicated.
The solicitation calls clearly are distinct from alarm calls that nest-sitting females make when their home is invaded by a rogue osprey, bald eagle, high-climbing raccoon, or other intruder. The male ospreys often are a bit slow to come to their mates when they hear a solicitation, but they come lickety-split if they hear an alarm.
Both male and female osprey homeowners will attack an invader ferociously with everything they have, especially when nestlings are cowering at the nest bottom. Some osprey parents have been known to die doing so. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 21 and 23, 2025.)