Eversource’s deterrents did not stop the Ospreys from reusing their nest in 2024. Photograph by Marsha C. Salett.

Ospreys have made a robust recovery in Massachusetts, including Cape Cod, since the banning of DDT (Rimmer 2025). Summer would not feel like summer without watching the Ospreys soaring, fishing, and raising their young. Since 2002, a pair of Ospreys—doubtless not always the same birds—has nested in the same spot in my neighborhood in Orleans and fledged two or three chicks every year. Most of us eagerly await the return of “our” Ospreys around the third week in March and follow their progress all summer.

To everyone’s surprise and delight, in April 2023, a second pair of Ospreys built a nest on a double crossarm utility pole at the southern end of our road. This pair had been displaced from their nest pole on Hopkins Island in the Orleans Town Cove by a pair of Bald Eagles (Mark Faherty, personal communication). Eversource, the electric utility company that owns the pole, discovered the nest sometime in May or June and installed protective insulation. This action brought a collective sigh of relief and appreciation from the neighbors, although we also understood that it is illegal to remove a nest with eggs or chicks. The new Ospreys fledged one of their two nestlings. The other died sometime during the summer.