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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.
12:02 is that a third egg we see?!?
I do believe that we just watched Rachel lay her 3rd egg.
More of this 😌
Welcome back A2Z! I look forward to some of your great action shots!
don’t think I’ve seen this before but Rachel was sitting with her feathers up for about 5 min 🤷♀️
Hi there – the camera feed sure looks blown-out, white balance wise. Is it automatically adjusting, or is there a manual base setting? Otherwise, awesome with the sound back! My 3rd year to follow.
Welcome back! I’m not sure what you mean – video looks normal to me.WB mode is set to auto, same as it’s always been. Maybe just the harsh afternoon sun?
Similar routine this morning at around the same time (9:04) – Rachel left the nest, presumably to find something to eat. Carson took a brief look at the eggs but then flew after her. A minute later they both returned to the nest and Carson attempted to mate briefly. Again Rachel flew off, and again Carson flew after her. After a few moments they were back again and this time Rachel seemed to have given up the hope of getting a snack. She settled back down on the eggs, and Carson stood nearby preening.
Has anyone seen him taking his took at brooding?
4:12 PM Carson and Rachel looking at their TWO eggs, then a little mating?
So far this year I’m 0 for 2 in finding a recording of the eggs being laid. Egg #2 was laid sometime yesterday morning, but I wasn’t able to narrow it down to pinpoint it. For most of the morning, there was only one, then a little later there were two. Maybe Rachel just wants a little privacy! Hopefully I’ll be able to capture the next one. Please let me know if you spot it happening! If she’s on schedule, it should be Monday or Tuesday.
I think we have a few days before all the eggs are laid. Last year they had 4 with 3 chicks hatched but only two surviving.
Four chicks hatched, but two sadly died in cold and wet weather.
I just saw 2 eggs! Woo hoo! Something happened since the last post 4 hours ago!
I think I saw the second too
Two beautiful eggs!
Back where we started. 😉
Rachel back to incubate, Carson back with other things on his mind…
men!!🤣
Lonely egg…
Carson reconsiders….
Interesting little sequence just now… (9:42 am)
Rachel was incubating the egg when Carson arrived. He sidled up to her gently, seeming to offer to take over for a bit, an offer which she accepted. She flew off to get a late breakfast – and a moment later, so did Carson! :-O
There sat little egg, all alone. But ever the good mother, moments later Rachel flew back to the nest, prepared to settle down again since clearly Carson was not in the mood. He WAS in the mood for something else, however. A second later he also flew back – and began to mate with her. No more offers of egg-tending, though! 😉 He flew off, and Rachel patiently settled back down, minus breakfast.
Observation – I was just looking at the pair of Osprey that just arrived at the Dunrovin Osprey Nest Cam in LoLo, MT and the male just did the same thing in the middle of the nest – he spread his wings in the center to prepare it for Mama and eggs. This one took it a step further and peddled his feet/talons to better make a nest egg!
If you look closely at any of these instances you will observe spread wings, spread tail feathers, and kicking of the talons to dig out a nest for eggs. I’m done here cause I cannot afford the charges but Glen is right…..many of your questions are addressed here. My other reason to leave is no nobody seems to read recent posts which also answer what I consider stupid questions. My last gift to your silliness’ is this……Osprey do NOT do synrconization of incubation…..They do the opposite…..they practice asynchronous hatching. This refers to a clutch of eggs that hatch days apart rather than hatching at the same time. PEACE OUT
Surferboy, after 38 years working as an Engineer in a stressful work environment and entering a new stress free retirement, I find solace, peace and joy learning about a completely different lifestyle which includes Rachel and Carson (even the songs of the gray catbirds – I would have never imagined). I now have time to stop and smell the roses too. It’s too bad that you don’t find the same happiness with this community sharing their enjoyment watching Rachel and Carson. Shalom.
Thank you Merc and Kmac for your intelligent and compassionate replies to Surferboy
Shalom!
Adieu Surferboy,
I believe Waquoit Bay Sanctuary is a place of learning. All good teachers preach that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. We all saw Rachel standing over her egg during torrential rain at a time when the egg would need the most protection. Why would she do that I wondered? Curious, I searched the “internet” and found the following passage which must obviously be misinformation.
“It would be advantageous for most birds to lay all the eggs in a clutch together, one straight after another, so that down the line the chicks hatch at around the same time. Of course, they can’t do this as it takes time for the female to produce an egg.
For ospreys this time period is around three days; there’s no cheating the laws of biology. They can, however, cheat the laws of hatching.
So a three-egg clutch will take around six days to lay. You would therefore expect the chicks to hatch six days apart – but that almost never happens.
Each subsequent egg is slightly smaller than the one before it, so by definition those eggs will take less time to hatch. This would foreshorten a six-day hatching sequence down by a day or so.
But Telyn’s three chicks hatch in less than half this time: just 2.6 days on average. Nora (2011 & 2012) was the same – 2.1 days for her.
A reproductive strategy called Delayed Incubation explains this. Freshly laid eggs can spend a lot of time in the zone of suspended development, not requiring much incubation at all – and indeed that is precisely what we see Telyn do each year. She only ‘properly’ incubates her eggs once the third one is laid.”
I also saw her standing and wondered if she was delaying incubation to better synchronize hatching. Did not see her do this last year.
I’ve noticed that a couple times too and thought she might be too wet on her underside for the eggs??
Now, I just saw Carson mount her while she is incubating, then he quickly flew off and came back with a nest building twig.
❣️For mama & egg🤓
Love it! I was wondering who was going to get Rachel an umbrella!
Thank you Janet! 😂😂👍
Rachel not sitting on egg. Delayed incubation for synchronization? Don’t think she did this last year.
I am worried about Rachel. She has been just standing over the egg swaying from side to side for almost an hour now.
yes, I noticed her swaying , hovering over her egg too. ?
She may be close to producing the second egg.
Poor Rachel… the weather she endures 🌧️She needs ☔️
Yay! Here we go! Hope all goes well
Week earlier than last year. Wonderful!
And it appears that their arrival was a week later, too!
Omg an egg!!! Rachel is sitting on the nest, haven’t seen that this year………and she just got up and surprise!!!
Yes! One beautiful egg!
Thought I was seeing things at first 🥴😂! I don’t know when the video was restored but hopefully it was recorded 🤞
4/11……I saw the egg @ 12:50pm
4/11…..12:40pm……….Cam is working now. Rachel is in incubation mode. Haven’t seen if there is an egg, though.
I cant assume that when I see a problem that everyone else is seeing (or not) what I do/don’t! I have not had video since yesterday afternoon. Glen is there a video problem now? No one else has commented so I am not sure if this is just me. I did clear my cache and other refreshes, etc., to no avail. I do miss seeing “my” peeps! Everyday is an adventure watching them 🙂
Here as well, Merc.
It’s not just you. I’m trying to figure out where the problem is and how to keep it from happening.
Carson did it again! At 9:17am he was prepping the nest (making sure the center was ready for eggs) and then he sat in the middle and spread his wings seeming to make sure it is properly sized for Rachel/eggs. I am impressed!
Glen, as a side bar, the sound has gone out several times over the past year. Has anyone tried to get to the root cause and can you find out if it is always the same problem?
Hi Merc. I searched through the comments and other than this past week, there hasn’t been an audio issue since the beginning of last July. That just required a hardware reset (but I think it took a couple of days due to availability of someone with access). This time for some reason the volume was turned down to zero. Weird since no one usually would access that setting except me and I didn’t even think to check it at first. We try to be as responsive as possible, but there are several parties involved — me (an FMNWR volunteer), certain WBNERR staff, Comcast, and HDOnTap (our streaming provider), so it can take a little time to figure out which end an issue is at. It’s great to have our community of viewers monitoring the camera status, since I get an email of all comments, and try to direct issues appropriately. We do our best!
Understood and thank you!
It appears to me that the nest is pretty bright after dark. Is that due to a low light camera or is there actually a light on the nest?
Hi Paul. This question is asked every year and it’s a good one! There is no light shining on the nest at night. The nest cam uses infrared (IR) technology for “night vision.” The IR spectrum is invisible to both humans and birds.
You might be interested to read about this and other frequently asked questions about osprey behavior and the nest, which can be found at:
https://www.friendsofmashpeenationalwildliferefuge.org/frequently-asked-questions-faqs-about-ospreys-and-the-nest-cam/
Thanks
hey surferboy-sound is back!! how do you think rachel and carson will react to the eclipse?
Two Requests……1 no more comments about audio…….It has been down since Thursday April 4…..I’m 74 years old and play close attention to this site……I get an alert every time anything is posted…….So…I open it to see a “no audio” message……this costs me money I do not have…..PLEASE NO MORE AUDIO DOWN MESSAGES…..T Y!!!! 2 Read This…..
https://thewildlifewriter.blogspot.com/2016/09/parent-offspring-recognition-in.html
Thanks, very interesting, surferboy.
Since ours aren’t tagged, too bad they don’t have name tags! Lol.
Would be so great if Charlie was back!❤️
Charlie had some splotches on his chest
No audio here either.
I’m not getting audio
I haven’t had audio for past 4 days
We’re trying to figure out what the issue is. Hopefully can get it resolved soon!
Haven’t checked in for a few days, nest is looking really good for eggs!
What I saw yesterday morning was quite an interesting action by Carson. He put his body in the nest center, nestled himself and widened his wings a bit, as to prep the area for eggs. It was a pretty interesting site.
Is audio not working? I don’t have any.
Patchogue nest has two eggs
Wow! do you know when they returned from migrating?
About 20 days ago
I checked back on the posts and first “mating” with “bib” male was 10 days ago, and with Carson, around 7 days ago, so I guess Rachel has approx 10-13 days to go🤷♀️?
I’m not convinced there was any copulation in the attempts by the freckled male.
me either. btw i know osprey mate for life, but any idea how they recognize their mate when they return in the spring? sight, smell ???
My guess would be the sound of their calls as penguins do in colonies of thousands.
Check this out……
https://thewildlifewriter.blogspot.com/2016/09/parent-offspring-recognition-in.html
thanx very interesting👍
I believe I saw 3 eggs this morning
Have really enjoyed watching these beautiful birds since last season. Missing audio for the past couple days. We are spoiled having the sounds of nature along with the video. Hope it can be fixed.
Mating 6:35
This is a first for me – mating at 7:38am while Rachel was eating her breakfast!