For more than three decades, Andy Soutter has kept a close eye on the ospreys of the East Bay. The Barrington resident has monitored the birds for about 36 years, building and repairing nesting platforms and regularly checking nearly 20 nests from his boat.

This summer, what he saw concerned him.

In early July, Soutter said a fellow osprey monitor knocked on his door after finding a young osprey on the ground beneath a nest on Little Island. The two launched one of Soutter’s boats and went to investigate.

The fledgling was in poor condition and appeared to have been on the ground for some time. Soutter believes the bird may have been forced from the nest as its parents struggled to provide enough food for two young.

“A lot of other nests were empty,” Soutter said.

His observations mirror a troubling pattern documented across Rhode Island this year.

According to data from the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s Osprey Monitoring Program, just 38% of the 339 nests monitored this season were successful, one of the lowest success rates recorded in the past decade. In 2025, roughly 70% of monitored nests were successful.

Dr. Sarah Deckel, director of bird conservation for the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, said one particularly striking example occurred at the organization’s Marsh Meadows Wildlife Refuge in Jamestown. An osprey nesting platform there has been active since around 2006 and is monitored with a live camera in partnership with the Conanicut Island Raptor Project. Every year, at least one young bird had successfully survived to leave the nest.

“This is the first year where this nest has failed,” Deckel said.

Is food the problem?

One concern shared by Soutter and Audubon researchers is whether the birds are finding enough food to successfully raise their young.

Ospreys rely almost entirely on fish, and Atlantic menhaden are an especially valuable prey species because of their high calories and nutritional value. Soutter believes reduced availability of menhaden is playing a significant role in what he has witnessed at nests in upper Narragansett Bay. He has raised concerns that commercial harvest of the species could be contributing to that shortage.

Deckel, however, cautioned that there is not yet enough scientific evidence to establish that connection. Audubon has observed signs consistent with food shortages and has seen less menhaden availability in the water, she said, but researchers have not directly studied the relationship among commercial fishing, local food availability and osprey nesting success.

“We can’t make that claim officially because we haven’t looked at the direct pattern between food availability and nest success,” Deckel said.

That does not mean food availability is being discounted as a possible explanation. In fact, Deckel said it is one of the factors researchers are particularly concerned about.

Weather, climate change, disease, contaminants and predators can all negatively affect wild bird populations, she said. But Audubon has not seen evidence that those factors alone explain the scale of this year's nesting failures.

“When we look at food availability, that is one of the driving factors for success of bird populations,” Deckel said. “If they don’t have enough food, then they can’t reproduce successfully that year.”

Competition can add another layer to the problem.

Bald eagles sometimes steal fish caught by ospreys, Deckel said, although Rhode Island has only a small number of nesting eagle pairs. Ospreys can also compete with one another for food, particularly after decades of population growth.

When food becomes more difficult to source, that competition becomes more consequential.

A disappointing season

For Soutter, this year’s results are especially difficult because he remembers a time when simply seeing an osprey in Barrington was remarkable.

Growing up in Barrington after his family arrived in 1968, Soutter remembers telling friends whenever he spotted one. Osprey populations were still recovering from the devastating effects of DDT, the pesticide that contributed to severe declines before it was banned in the United States in the 1970s.

Over the decades that followed, the population made a remarkable recovery.

Soutter has watched much of that recovery firsthand, maintaining platforms and monitoring generations of birds. That history makes the unsuccessful nests he observed this year particularly concerning.

Audubon is now trying to determine exactly what is happening.

Next year, Deckel said researchers will expand monitoring and install additional nest cameras. The cameras could allow scientists to document how frequently adults feed their young, identify the species of fish being delivered and compare feeding patterns at coastal and inland nests with their eventual nesting success.

Volunteers will also begin recording foraging behavior in addition to their traditional monitoring of eggs, young and fledglings.

Those observations could help researchers determine whether certain prey species or feeding patterns are associated with greater nesting success.

Audubon is also participating in discussions surrounding Atlantic menhaden management. Deckel said the organization has been involved in meetings concerning future stock management, is communicating with conservation organizations in other states about their osprey nesting results and plans to attend a November meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in Newport.

Although researchers cannot yet say commercial fishing is responsible for the osprey nesting failures, Deckel said evidence of food-shortage behavior and similar concerns reported elsewhere along the Atlantic Coast are enough to warrant closer study.

After years of monitoring the birds, Soutter hopes this season proves to be an exception — not the beginning of another decline.

“I've enjoyed every minute of it,” he said of his years monitoring ospreys. “There’s lots of us out there trying to keep an eye on things.” Come spring, when the ospreys return to the East Bay, Soutter will be watching the nests once again.