When residents of Mount Sinai Harbor, a beachfront community in Brookhaven, New York, recently noticed an animal struggling in the marsh along the shore, the worried animal lovers quickly contacted Jaeger's Run Animal Rescue for help.
By the time rescuer
Lisa Jaeger arrived with raptor expert Bobby Horvath, the sun had set. The rescuers picked their way through the grass, shining a flashlight to see. Soon enough, they spotted him — a young osprey sitting alone on a branch.
Jaeger and Horvath could see the osprey’s family members circling in the nest above their heads. The bird was a fledgling and had likely either fallen from his nest or left too early. The rescuers didn’t want to intervene, but they worried the vulnerable osprey might be attacked by another animal while on the ground. They decided they had to help.
Jaeger carefully placed a net over the bird, and when he didn’t react, she gently grabbed him with gloves. Though he was young, the osprey was already very strong, with a 4-foot wingspan.
Rescuers brought the osprey back to the rescue center, where he could decompress and wait for the bad weather to pass. A few days later, team members brought the osprey back to the beach and reunited him with his family.
“It was beautiful,” Jaeger told The Dodo.
The animal lover is glad that the osprey is back where he belongs and happy to have aided him along his journey.
“I'm so grateful to be able to see these beautiful creatures up close,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
