Article by Tom Tatum
What started out as a simple flounder fishing foray for Tom Tatum and Dave Stone (aka Stoney) of Ocean City turned into a mission of mercy as the two anglers encountered a young osprey fledging on the verge of drowning as it stroked its weary wings while treading the waters of the East Channel near Harbor Island. While Tatum maneuvered his boat, “Open Debate”, alongside the struggling bird, Stone netted it and placed it on the bow. The two continued fishing for two hours, assuming the exhausted osprey would eventually take flight. When it failed to fly, they resolved to cruise to the DNR office and the Jack Taylor Boat House at the commercial harbor.
As luck would have it, Gary Tyler and Steve Doctor, who work for the DNR Fisheries, were there to offer their assistance and transfer the osprey from the boat to the boat house. The Maryland Natural Resources Police then contacted Meghan Sochowski, a Ranger at Assateague State Park, who also works with a program called Scales and Tails, an educational project devoted to teaching the public about reptiles and birds of prey. In that role, her raptor training made her one of the few people in the area with the expertise to properly handle these animals.
“Fortunately the osprey was healthy and not injured in any way,” reported Sochowski. “The osprey had all of his primary flight feathers but a lot of times, when young ospreys first practice flying, it’s not uncommon for young birds to tire and end up in the water where they can drown. Since their nests are surrounded by open water, it presents a hazard for the fledglings during their flight training.”
It turns out that this was the second osprey that Sochowski had helped rescue that week. “If it had been injured we would have sent it to Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research in Newark, Delaware,” she explained, “but since the bird was just totally exhausted from his ordeal, he simply needed time to recuperate, so we gave him a night’s rest in a calm environment and the next day he was successfully released back into the wild and flew off over the bay.”
Tom is a freelance writer and President of the Mason-Dixon Outdoor Writers Association. Tom will also be a columnist for the Coastal Hunter coming out on October 1st.
