PERRYSVILLE — A local osprey is on the road to recovery after being seriously tangled in fishing line.
Julie Schwartz, executive director of the Ohio Bird Sanctuary, said around the middle of last week, her team was alerted by a concerned resident about an injured osprey near Pleasant Hill Lake along Ohio 95.
Schwartz said the caller noticed on a live video feed of the nest that one of the juvenile birds never seemed to leave and had fishing line around its foot.
“Once they alerted us to it, we logged in and looked at the camera,” she said. “(We) saw the same thing and shared the same concern.”
The next challenge was deciding how to rescue the osprey, whose nest rests 45 feet above the ground. Schwartz said OBS works frequently with Galion-based Woody Woods Tree Service, owned and operated by experienced arborist Brett Woodard.
“We reached out to him (Woodard) and I was fully anticipating he might say no,” she said. “But that isn’t what he said. He was more than willing to help us.
“It took a couple of attempts and some creativity, but we did get the bird.”
Two of the bird’s four toes and one ankle were freed from a significant amount of fishing line and resulting injuries are currently being treated and monitored at OBS at 3774 Orweiler Road in Springfield Township.
Schwartz said she believes the osprey will completely recover and be returned to its nest near Pleasant Hill.
Fishing line wrapped around osprey’s ankle, two toes
As a fish-eating bird of prey, Schwartz said its common for ospreys to nest near water.
Fortunately, the injured osprey’s nesting platform was not located over water — making a difficult rescue slightly less challenging.
After Woodard and the OBS team secured the osprey, Schwartz said they found three areas where fishing line was wrapped around the bird: its ankle and two different toes.
“We are super hopeful at this point that this bird will be able to recover from these injuries,” she said.
(Below are pictures of the injured osprey, as well as a photo of Brett Woodard making an attempt to rescue the bird from its nesting platform. These images are courtesy of the Ohio Bird Sanctuary. The story continues below.)
Once the osprey is healthy enough to return to the wild, Schwartz said they’ll take it back to the nesting platform it was rescued from.
She said the bird likely won’t skip a beat.
“We won’t keep it one second longer than we have to,” she said. “But as long as it’s requiring these dressing changes (and) until that skin has healed over on the toe, it’s going to need to stay with us.
“It’s a young bird. It’s got a long life ahead of it and we have every reason right now to believe it will completely recover and go right back out,” Schwartz said.
She emphasized Woodard’s efforts to assist with the rescue and said it wouldn’t have been possible without him.
“His willingness to go out with us not just once, but two different times to try and get that bird, really says a lot about him,” the executive director said. “And I don’t think he did it to promote his business.
“I truly think he did it because he cares about wildlife, so it was a neat thing to be a part of.”
Public interest in osprey rescue, live nest cams
The osprey rescue was an “unusual” experience for the bird sanctuary, which typically relies on members of the public, wildlife officers or law enforcement to bring it birds in need of help, Schwartz said.
But what led to the bird’s rescue was a common scenario.
There are three nesting platforms located near Pleasant Hill Lake, the executive director said, of which two are captured live by cameras 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“There are people out there that get really invested and they watch them (ospreys) and they keep track of their nesting behaviors, how many eggs they had, all these kinds of things,” Schwartz said.
A Facebook post from OBS on Wednesday sparked large interest in the story, receiving hundreds of likes and several comments in a matter of hours.
There are regularly between 30 to 35 people watching the live feed of this particular nest anytime Schwartz checks it, she said.
“I do think that there is a fair bit of interest (in the osprey), particularly those that were watching that nest before,” Schwartz said. “It’s definitely one of those feel-good stories.”