We were driving up to Augusta recently when we noticed a newly arrived osprey carrying a stick to the top of a relatively recently installed high metal pole that carries electricity transmission lines from one side of the Kennebec River to the other. Another osprey was already sitting on the flat top of the pole amidst a few sticks that were obviously the beginnings of the pair’s nest. This is a relatively new construction, and this is the first time we have seen ospreys nesting there. It made us think of the similarities and contrasts between the nest sites of ospreys and bald eagles.

Most of the eagle nests that we have seen in Maine are high up in white pines, perhaps occasionally in some other large, old tree and more often than not in a living tree. Eagle nests seem to afford more protection from the elements—and privacy from the prying eyes of humans! Osprey nests, on the other hand, are often completely exposed at the top of electricity transmission poles, dead trees, and other tall structures, often quite near to human activity. Ospreys will even nest on the ground and on low structures. Not long ago we heard stories of one that tried to build a nest on top of someone’s house in East Boothbay!

Why would ospreys be so tolerant of nesting near humans and in more exposed situations? We haven’t read anything specific about this but we have a few theories. Ralph Palmer, a venerable ornithologist who retired to Tenants Harbor where he lived until he passed away in 2003, wrote in his 1949 classic book Maine Birds that there was an old superstition on the Maine coast that to kill an osprey brought bad luck. About bald eagles he wrote in the same book that “These eagles and their nests, being large and conspicuous, are subject to molestation by humans.” Is it possible that today’s more secluded nests of eagles and more conspicuous nests of ospreys are at least partially the result of differences in how past humans treated them?

Bald eagles often steal fish from ospreys and can also be nest predators of osprey. A few years ago an eagle was caught grabbing the nestlings from the osprey nest on a platform above one of the buildings at the Audubon Hog Island camp in Bremen. The nest has a camera trained on it 24 hours a day that is live streamed to the Internet and thousands of people enjoy watching the ospreys and their antics. But in 2015 the camera documented an eagle quickly snatching the young when the nest was left unattended. It made us wonder if, in the past, if eagles were regularly shot at by humans and ospreys were not, perhaps ospreys gained some protective advantage by nesting near humans even if the nests were obvious and exposed.

We are fortunate that ospreys and eagles have both rebounded from the low numbers of the DDT era and concerted conservation efforts. Both species are doing well along some of Maine’s rivers, in part thanks to increased numbers of returning fish following removal of dams that prevented them from reaching their ancestral breeding grounds.

So all of this begs the question, now that populations are rebounding to more historic levels, will eagles begin to nest in more exposed locations or ospreys in more hidden and protected locations? Either way, we will all be watching and enjoying them!

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the book, “Maine’s Favorite Birds.”