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Welcome to “Season Five” of our osprey cam! Get ready for another exciting season of osprey viewing at the Waquoit Bay Reserve, brought to you by the Friends of Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge
If you’d like to show your appreciation for the nest cam, please Support the Friends of Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge! As a nonprofit volunteer organization, we support a wide variety of education, research and stewardship projects within the Mashpee Refuge to ensure the long-term protection and enhancement of native wildlife and habitats.
Thank you in advance!
We are thrilled to offer this live stream of an active pair of Osprey at their nest at Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. The pair are appropriately named Rachel and Carson, after the famed environmentalist.
This opportunity for a bird’s eye view of a beloved bird’s habitat is the result of a collaboration between The Friends of Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge, which helped plan and locate the site for this unique “nest cam,” the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, one of the Refuge partners, and Comcast, which generously provided the equipment, installation and broadband connectivity to power this viewing experience.
One of our goals as a community-based nonprofit is to give the public opportunities to enjoy and interact with nature and wildlife. Thanks to Comcast, the live streaming of this osprey nest will broaden our reach to all of Cape Cod and beyond. We are grateful for the opportunity to use the live nest cam for observation, research and education purposes.
View highlights from 2026 (“Season Five”)
View highlights from 2025 (“Season Four”)
View highlights from 2024 (“Season Three”)
View highlights from 2023 (“Season Two”)
View highlights from 2022 (“Season One”) – mating, egg laying and hatching, feeding and more!
Please feel free to comment below with your observations or any questions you may have. We welcome your comments and questions! If you’d like to see a list of questions other viewers have asked, please see our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Ospreys and the Nest Cam. You may also want to read this article to learn more about ospreys on Cape Cod.
Please note that first-time posters must be approved before comments are displayed, and allow up to 24 hours before your initial post can be seen by others.
Echo in the nest and non-stop squawking for breakfast at 6:40 am. (Methinks she would be a tad less hungry and use fewer calories overall if she didn’t spend so much time squawking…. 😉
did the baby birds leave the nest
Fantastic wing action pic! Such a beautiful Osprey
Try again
Cool to see Rachel with Echo(?) still together sharing fish on nest…each day less & less nest activity
Thanks for the updates, Dena!
Yes Dena. A bit sad that the season is ending….not quite an empty nest as yet. Nice this one juvenile is using his/her voice with much conviction! 😉
I will miss watching Ospreys in flight & hearing their calls…the nest in my area are still active but less & less…
WooHoo Thanks
break-🐟
😊👍
Back at nest..,
Tiny visitor
at 9:41, a hummingbird landed on the side of the nest! it’s a little too big for him
1/2 🐟
Peaceful moment…sweet 🥰
The other day it had a redfish. I did not see the fish brought in but it still had it’s head and was very lively. Like you say the wounded one held the fish with it’s right leg through all the flapping about that the fish was doing. Unfortunately I did not see it eat yesterday. It also is very comfortable sleeping up on the wooden rails.
Pure Survival Instincts
I have yet to tune into the wounded soldier. I do wonder if it’s possible for an Osprey to fish with one talon, so I googled it & what popped up
“Osprey snatches fish from water with one set of talons”
YouTube – Mark Smith-Apr 8 2023
So let’s just think collective positive thoughts 🙏
Good call! ❤️🤞
It’s a WAG (wild ass guess) 🤣.
My heart goes out to that wounded soldier on the Patchogue nest. I understand nature and survival etc. but I don’t understand why some entity doesn’t go and rescue it. It will never be able to fish with that leg but I would think that there must be an aviary the would love to have it.
Just wonder where Carson and Delta are. Never see them at the nest
Early this morning Echo had a fish, did not see delivery though. Just eating & squawking. Funny, very vocal
Echo calling for breakfast and moving twigs around in the nest at 7:45 am.
Sometimes I wonder. Is Echo calling for breakfast, a colicky chick, mourning, being threatened, distressed, etc. She was squawking last night while she was eating and Rachel was sitting right there. Could not figure that one out.
Whoever that juvenile is, we can be pretty sure we’re always seeing the same one (going with “Echo” for now!) because it is ALWAYS squawking. Alone, with Rachel, eating, not eating. Last night I watched it/her sleeping on the nest with Rachel, and she squawked in her sleep! (Or rather, was head down, seemed to be fast asleep, woke up and squawked vigorously for a few seconds, and went right back to sleep.)
Just a little being with a lot to say, I guess. 😉
Is the adult Rachel or Carson? I can’t tell…
It’s the female, she brought this fish headless almost an hour ago.
Still receiving fish…
They had been there from just before sundown last night. The female arrived with a sizeable fish. It took the juvenile til late this AM to finish it.
Bierrgaard… has a fantastic book also!
Checkout Rob Bieargard’s website UNCC Biology..Extremely interesting! Probably spelled his name wrong..
👍
Not an Osprey, but an Eagle… 🙂
https://www.capecodtimes.com/picture-gallery/news/2023/08/15/photo-gallery-birdsey-cape-wildlife-center-releases-bald-eagle/8352851001/
Thanks Glenn I was worried they left this little one.
Dinner
Is this Rachel and a chick?
Which one?
It seems the one chick (I assume it’s the female) spends most of the time in the nest and is always calling for fish delivery. Should we be worried she is not learning to fish to take care of herself? She seems anxious.
Last year, the last chick didn’t leave the nest until around September 12th, so there’s still lots of time for them to learn to provide for themselves. No cause for worry at this point; it’s still early for the chicks to be self sufficient.
Glenn, Did Foxtrox (the other chick) leave or something bad happen? From what I think I am seeing, only one chick is at the nest and the other has gone AWOL. I so wish they were tagged so we could tell who’s who.
Correction – Did Echo (the other chick). . . . .
I was just reading mom go’s first then dad then baby’s
All separate
Maybe a silly question.if everyone leaves the baby then how does the baby know where to fly to?
It’s one of those mysteries of nature! Here’s a link to an interesting article about bird migration in general and the various theories about their instinctual ability to navigate: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/the-basics-migration-navigation/
Thank you!! Very interesting.
I hope not.
The Tribe over on Great Pond estuary seems to have already departed on their journey South.
Has our family of 4 on Waquoit flown off as well??
As of this morning, there are at least two still here. The mom and one juvenile.
Morning fish delivery
We’re working on the issue. Hopefully it will be back online soon!
I am able to see the nest now 👍
same here fatal error
All morning I have gotten the fatal network error
Black screen fatal error again.
I’m not sure what’s going on. Maybe something to do with the thunderstorms we’ve had. I’ll have someone restart the equipment tomorrow to see if that helps.
Thanks, Glenn, live video is back.:)
Ditto – fatal error again. Glen – appreciate the reset/restart tomorrow.
Has anyone else come to the conclusion that the chick (I believe we are calling her Echo) spending most of the time in the nest is female? The brown necklace on the front is just like Rachel’s.
I had a picture for a while, left and when I came back, no picture but it said this at the top of the black screen, if it means anything to anyone HLS.js error: networkError – fatal: true – manifestLoadTimeOut
6:55 pm
Yep – that is what I was getting! After clearing my browsing history and now finally powering off/on my device, it is working for now!