Banding on Great and Little Egg Harbor Bays

On July 3rd I was out conducting ground surveys on Great Bay and Little Egg Harbor. My friend, Bill Steiner joined me to photograph the event. Below you will see a bunch of Bill's photos of the excursion. Some are excellent, where you can see the molting feathers of an adult in flight and that it is banded.

Here you can see that this female Osprey is banded on its right leg

and it's molting the 7th primary (flight) feather.

You can see the molting and band in this photo as well.

Here I am banding nestlings at a nest near

Osbourne Island in Little Egg Harbor.

This is one of the new nests that we installed in March from a

grant from Exelon. Of the 10 platforms we installed, 4 were occupied.

This has been a problem and will always be one. This chick had both its

legs wrapped in ribbon from a mylar ballon. If would have not visited this

nest within the next week, then this nestlings could have died due to

being entangled by the ribbon.

Me cutting away the ribbon to free the bird.

If you want to support ospreys in NJ, please

DO NOT buy Mylar balloons and release them into

the air for any reason!!!!!! You can see the negative

impacts that it can cause.....

Climbing to a nest in front of the Rutgers Marine Field Station at the end

of Great Bay Blvd.

At some point we were being followed

by an adult osprey. She followed us for approximately

1 mile away from her nest.

Here I'm entering data and you can see two addled eggs that I

collected for contaminant studies (if we get funding).

An adult Osprey dive bombs me as I band its young.

Thanks to Bill for taking all these great photos!

All photos are by Bill Steiner.