By Dylan Darling / The Register-Guard
EUGENE, Ore. — The osprey has landed at the University of Oregon School of Law — and onto the web.
A webcam perched above a nest atop the Knight Law Center on Agate Street offers a live look at osprey activity. A pair of osprey, a male and female, have been taking turns sitting on two eggs since mid-April. The eggs likely will hatch in mid- to late May, said Laura McGinnis, UO School of Law spokeswoman.
“We are kind of excited here because it is likely to coincide with commencement,” she said.
Law school grads will don their mortarboard caps on May 19 this year. The osprey cam might just help the school add more students to the flock of Oregon Ducks; McGinnis said the webcam has more traffic than any other part of the law school’s website.
The webcam garnered more than 5,000 unique page views from the end of March to the end of April, said Jim Horstrup, building manager at the law center.
The osprey nest rests on a 52-foot-galvanized steel lamp post retrofitted to be a platform, he said. Private donors paid $15,000 to buy and install the camera, which cost $2,600 alone, he said. The donors did so to honor former School of Law Dean Margaret “Margie” Paris, who retired last year.
While the osprey nest has become a fixture, it wasn’t where the osprey couple first chose to make a home. The birds used to nest on a light tower at Hayward Field across Agate Street from the law school.
Campus legend has it that one of the osprey dropped a trout on lane four of the historic track while runners were on it. So, Horstrup said the UO had the nest moved to its current spot in March 2014. He added that the birds took to the new nest two weeks after installation.
Webcams focused on birds and other animals prove to be popular, said Louise Shimmel, executive director at the Cascades Raptor Center in Eugene.
“For people it’s a slice of nature they don’t normally see,” she said.
Broadcast through YouTube, the UO osprey cam shows the building and parking lot below the nest.
Decades ago, the number of osprey in the United States took a significant hit due to the use of the insecticide DDT, which thinned their eggshells. But a federal ban of the insecticide in 1972 helped lead to a resurgence for the bird of prey, Shimmel said. Osprey are not shy, and their willingness to nest near people also has helped their comeback.
A young osprey breaks out of its egg about 37 days after the mother lays the egg, she said. The chicks will then rely on their parents for food for about two months before fledging, or first taking flight. Osprey primarily eat and feed their chicks fish.
“They are never very far from water,” Shimmel said. “And what they like is to be in the highest tree around.”
The nest is about a half mile from the Willamette River. She said osprey have short legs and powerful wings so the birds are drawn to platforms and broad-topped trees for nesting sites.
Some regular viewers of the webcam’s live stream go to day care nearby. Two classes of youngsters ages 2 and 3 — 20 children in all — attend classes in a building near the law school, said Sara Bowman, interim director at the Vivian Olum Child Development Center. The kids keep an eye on the birds by peering up from the day care’s playground and gathering around computer screens in their classrooms.
“So they are doing both,” Bowman said, “watching in real life and then checking it out on the cam.”
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