DATE: Sunday, August 3, 1997                TAG: 9708010332

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: Coastal Journal 

SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow 

                                            LENGTH:   67 lines

MALE OSPREY MEETS SAD ENDING IN TANGLE WITH OLD FISHING LINE

The sight of a dead osprey hanging from a tree, trapped by fishing line that had wrapped around its majestic body, broke Christina Horan's heart.

It was bad enough that the bird had met such a tragic end at the hands of a careless fisherman. It was even worse for Horan because she was sure the osprey was one of a pair she had watched all spring and summer as they fished in a lake that abuts her Ocean Lakes yard.

``They would hunt in the lake every morning and evening,'' Horan said. ``Last year we saw them all the time, too.''

She was so used to hearing and seeing the osprey every morning when it flew in to fish that one day recently she was aware that she hadn't heard its high-pitched call. When Horan looked up, she didn't see her old friend flying overhead either.

``Then I saw the buzzards circling,'' she said. ``I looked up and saw this brown thing suspended from the tree.

``I grabbed my binoculars,'' she added, ``and said, `Oh, my God, I can't believe it!' There he was hanging upside down like a ritual murder. I literally cried.''

She called local osprey expert Reese Lukei who came out and identified the bird as a male, probably from a nest in the Dam Neck area. The male osprey is the sole provider, feeding both the female and young after the chicks are born, Lukei explained.

If the babies were too young to fly, they probably perished in the nest because the female would eventually get so hungry she would leave, he added. Young osprey fledged this year anywhere from the third week of June to the third week of July. Horan found the dead male in early July.

Lukei doesn't often hear of an adult osprey tangled in fishing wire. But it is common for youngsters to get trapped. Osprey build their nests of sticks and anything else they find lying around, including odds and ends like tennis shoes and fishing line.

``They would bring a ball of monofilament to the nest,'' Lukei said, ``just like they'd bring in a ball of grass.''

This spring when he was banding osprey at False Cape State Park, Lukei came across a two-day old youngster in a nest with line wrapped all around its head. ``He was sitting there with his head bobbing up and down and getting more and more wrapped in line,'' Lukei said.

Fortunately Lukei was able to untangle the youngster and it was no worse for the wear. Horan's osprey was not that lucky.

Her husband, Steve Horan, had to literally build scaffolding to get high enough in the tree to cut down the branch where the osprey was hanging. ``I couldn't live with seeing it hanging there,'' she said.

When they got the bird down, Horan found fishing line tangled around its talon, up around his neck and under one wing. ``There was a big ball of line under its claw,'' she said.

``It looked like somebody's line got tangled and they cut it off and threw it away,'' she said. ``There was no debris on the line, no hook on it, just a mass of tangled line.''

Horan is going to write an article for the Ocean Lakes civic league newsletter to warn fishermen of what can happen when they toss their fishing line aside. She also is trying to plan a program on osprey by Lukei for the civic league.

But the same thing could happen anywhere in Virginia Beach. The bottom line is, don't litter.

``People,' Horan said, ``have to clean up after themselves.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by CHRISTINA HORAN

The male osprey had fishing line tangled around its talon, neck and

wing.

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