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Osprey focal point of special ‘Ding’ lecture

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J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge ospreys. NANCY MALSON
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Alan Poole, associate of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and editor and developer of “The Birds of North America Life History” series. PHOTO PROVIDED

“Osprey’s Across the Pond” will be the focal point of a special lecture at J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge next month by an associate of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who is also the editor and developer of “The Birds of North America Life History” series.

“It’s mostly about osprey in Europe, but also in other parts of the world and osprey migration,” Alan Poole said, adding that osprey go long distances to spend winter. “It’s a look at osprey as a global species.”

Poole will visit Sanibel for a special lecture at 5 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 15, at the “Ding” Darling Visitor & Education Center auditorium to share information about osprey, a global bird. The lecture is provided through a partnership with “Ding” Darling Wildlife Society Friends of the Refuge, and the International Osprey Foundation.

In the mid 1980s, while Poole was in graduate school he began studying osprey, which has continued throughout the years.

“I have always lived in areas, or had a place, where ospreys are fairly common where they are nesting,” he said.

There are about 100 ospreys within two, or three miles of Poole’s house, which is the south coast of Massachusetts.

“There are about 50,000 pairs of nesting pairs of osprey in the world. The east coast is almost a third of those,” he said. “Florida is one of the hot spots. Chesapeake Bay is a hot spot with almost 10,000 pairs.”

When the osprey first attracted Poole’s attention they were beginning to recover from a bad period the 50s and 60s from pesticides. He said as they were recovering, he began thinking about some of the factors that were both encouraging and discouraging recovery.

“In the northeast there were a lot of artificial nesting platforms that were built for the birds,” Poole said. “One of the things I was looking at was the affects of platforms, (which were) largely pretty positive.”

Since then he said the osprey has had an exponential growth because they are one of the few birds in the world that range from the northern hemisphere to Australia.

The osprey, he explained is a very adaptive bird due to it living on fish. Poole said the osprey is the only hawk that catches fish, resulting in the bird not having to fight other birds for fish.

“There are a lot of fish in a lot of different places. They specialize on fish, but they are very general in the kids of fish they take. They don’t turn up their nose on very many fish. If they can catch it, they are likely able to grab it,” Poole said, adding that they can also find nesting sites wherever they go. “As long as they can find those, they will do well.”

Pool wrote a book about osprey in the 1980s. He also helped put together an encyclopedia, 18 volumes, comprising of 18,000 pages about everything there is to know about North American birds in “Birds of North America Life History” series.

The lecture has limited seating and is available on a first-come basis. For more information, call (239) 472-1100 ext. 4.