An osprey hatched in a south suburban forest preserve has been found more than 2,500 miles from home in South America.
The osprey was found injured in Colombia and nurtured back to health, according to the Cook County Forest Preserves.
“When I was told that it was Colombia, I was thinking Columbia, Missouri first,” said Chris Anchor, a Forest Preserve senior wildlife biologist. “And when they told me it was actually Colombia, the country, I was rather incredulous.”
The bird was originally banded by Cook County biologists at Sag Quarries in Lemont, where there are 20 nesting platforms for raptors.
Cook County biologists annually measure, weigh, draw blood and check for overall signs of health in recently hatched osprey chicks. Each nesting pair can produce one to four chicks a year.
The conservation effort started in the 1980s after major declines in the osprey population caused, in part, by DDT insecticide use from the 1950s to early 1970s.
Ospreys fly south the winter after they hatch, usually to the Gulf Coast, where they remain for two years as they become sexually mature and find a mate before returning to where they hatched.
The wayward osprey was banded in Lemont in June 2023 and was found nearly a year later in Bucaramanga, Colombia. The local group that treated the osprey contacted the U.S. Geological Survey’s Bird Banding Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which informed the Cook County biologists who banded the bird.
What are the chances of the bird being found alive and tracked after a more than 2,500-mile trip? Almost none, according to Anchor.
“Very, very, very slight, as you might imagine,” Anchor said in a news release. “It doesn’t take much ciphering or statistical analysis to realize that. For a bird to make it all the way down to South America and then get found and then get reported is incredibly remote.”