Decided to take some pictures to see how the osprey chicks Wilson and Gwen have grown / matured in the last week. Saw Poppa Skip deliver lunch, so the 1st photo is Mom and the 2 chicks enjoying their fluke lunch.
Focus on food, the osprey heads stayed down for 10 minutes. Dad flexing after delivering lunch.
Estimate the chicks are 6-7 weeks of age. Check out Wilson’s wings! He seemed to control them pretty well, flight attempts coming!
Wilson spreads his wings, quite impressive! Gwen still hungry picking at the leftovers.
The Osprey chicks, Wilson and Gwen, are growing up quickly, hope to see them learn to fly and fish in the coming weeks.
The young ospreys will hang with Mom and Dad for rest of the summer learning their skills.
Osprey cam video of the nest at the east end of the Gilgo Marina has gotten softer or more out of focus in last week or so. Clean window and lens to no avail.
I have use the Sony Pella cameras for the web site, Went thru the other two spares I have from over the years, they are all 15 to 20 years old. Both had issues. The ocean surf cam is a Pella living on borrowed time, it has been running since 2006.
I have a Canon CB-50i, it was the Long Beach Cam for 10-15 years. Always thought it was sharper than the Sony, but think full zoom Sony better than Canon in this application.
Now as to the fam… they seemed to be doing well. The parents stay mostly at the nest, Betty with the chicks Wilson and Gwenny while Skip keeps an eye out on the post out in front of the nest. Skip does the fishing keeping mom and the kids fed and safe. Hope to see the chicks try to fly in the next week or so.
A beautiful Sunday afternoon at Gilgo, looking around the wetlands caught a glimpse of one of the baby osprey thru my binoculars. Set up the camera and was quite surprised as to how much she had grown and all the feathers!
Based on the nest finally secured on April 15th , thinking the eggs would have created around May 1st. The female osprey incubates them for 5 to 6 weeks so the eggs would have hatched around June 7th. I think the baby osprey were 3 weeks old on July 1st as shown in the image above.
Young osprey spend days practicing to fly, right around their nest. The bird gets their first flight at seven to eight weeks. Based on the estimates, this chick is 5 to 6 weeks old.
Amazing amount of feathers, the chick had trouble lifting her wing, the photo makes her look more graceful then she is. Still very much learning her body. Reminds me of my Great Dane Jackson, as a pup, learning to walk.
Parking Barriers Installed May 11th at Gilgo Beach
Not sure what and why this is happening. Guess it is about coronavirus control. Someone has decided that the beach is a problem and so I guess this is their answer. Open the beach but limit the parking. Estimate they blocked off 50% of the parking lot, about 175 parking spaces.
Concrete blocks to prevent approx 200 cars from parking at Gilgo Beach July, 2020
As of today, the Town of Babylon has blocked out all the parking spots east of the entrance. Not sure why they would use concrete barriers unless they are planning to limit the parking for a long time.
Would guess it cost at least 15 thousand dollars to do what they have done thus far. Had the Excavator towed here approximately 30 miles. Then 4 dump trucks hauled the barriers with 4 pickup trucks to assist. Total 10 trucks and men for the day plus whomever where on the other end loading the barriers.
Cuomo says June 6th latest date, have heard June 25th also. That is in a couple of weeks, so whats with the town installing barriers? Heard happening at Cedar Beach also. The state ocean beach parks are open, Tobay Beach is open. Guess we will find out in the coming weeks.
UPDATE JULY 1st, 2020
The town came couple weeks ago and moved all the cement blocks to a corner of the parking lot so that the lot is back to capacity. Note; thus far, the town is closing the lot when it is around 50% capacity.
UPDATE JULY 12th, 2020
The traffic coming over the Robert Moses Bridge hit the ridiculous stage this morning. By 9 am traffic was backed up to Montauk Hwy!
This afternoon around 2 pm, for as far as I could see in both directions on Eastbound Ocean Parkway, hundreds of cars were parked up on the dunes with people going over the dunes to get to the beach.
Empty side of Gilgo Parking Lot due to capacity reductions with cars parked along Ocean Parkway instead .
The number of vehicles on Ocean Parkway West that are airing down and up at Coast Guard entrance to Gilgo State Park has increased. Maybe people are thinking it is OK to park after driving by.
Maybe this is happening due to frustration of driving for hours in traffic and not being able to get into any of the town or state beach parks. There has to be a better way.
The young pair of osprey that settled at the east end of Gilgo had two babies last week!
Skip, the male osprey has been hanging out below the nest for the couple weeks. Betty, the female osprey stayed most of the time in the nest, figured sitting on eggs.
Decided to shot them this morning, set up tripod and it was a wonderful surprise to see the babies! Looks like they had 2 of them last week sometime.
Took photographs on July 1st, 2020 from 7:30 to 8:30 am. It was a beautiful summer morning at Gilgo Beach. Light north wind, sun coming up, parking lot filling with surfers come and going, swell small, 2.8′, 10 sec with some fun on the set waves.
Hope you enjoy, watch the live Osprey Cam of their nest here at gilgo.com or our mobile site.
Somebody is hungry! picture soft, heavy crop, below is the original.Hungry chick on osprey nest at Gilgo Beach with mom in nest and dad looking on.The new family of 4! With proud momma osprey looking out and daddy osprey looking north. The kids are alright!
We have had a fly box at the east end of the Gilgo Marina for years where it helps control the green fly invasions each summer. A surprise this spring has been a young Osprey couple decided to build their nest there.
Ospreys have made a real comeback here on Long Island and guess that nesting areas are getting scarce. The nest was started the 1st week in April with the build going smoothly when a spring storm came up with gusty west winds and blew it away. They started a rebuild right away, but within days, another 30 mph west wind coming thru and shredded it again!
On April 12th, they came back for a third try. A determined couple of birds for sure. Decided to change the Gilgo Bay Cam to an Osprey Nest Cam on the 16th and got it running that day.
An unintended consequence of the Osprey Nest Cam is because the camera is at maximum zoom to get on the nest was not happy with the image quality so looked into software settings. The image quality and size was set up last decade when 20 kb meant something.
Decided to try full image and movie files uploads with no compression. Jpegs uploads went from 20 kb to 300 kb with the image not that much better. So reset sizing so image is bigger. Thought it looked better so reset image settings for the Ocean Surf Cam too. Will see if my ISP complains. So the birds brought a better picture of the waves for the gilgo beach surf cam, you never know.
Hope you enjoy, watch the live Osprey Cam of their nest here
Sold the condo in Long Beach so gilgo.com and or applesurf.com’s Long Beach Surf Cam is retired. Other Long Beach surf cams that can be checked include;
The Surfers View website also provides a live video feed and a forecast with the surf cam displayed also from Long Beach Surf Shop located on Main Street. There are Surfline cams at West End and Lincoln Blvd with the Lincoln location being a premium only cam, have to be a Surfline member to view. waves, p
This photo of me was taken by photographer walking the beach back in 2007, had it up for 1 day and he called for an acknowledgement. I did not want to commercialize the site, so I took it down. If he sees this post, please send me link information. Hope all get waves, peter
Seems like Swellinfo ongoing forecast issue is lingering. Looked around for alternative, found stormsurf.com.
Graphics are last decade, but the surf forecast and weather information is extensive. Mark Sponsier created the site back in 1998. He packed the site with information on how waves are created, tracked and forecasted.
The 5 day forecast for Gilgo is part of a broader New Jersey to New York forecast, but serves up some good info.
There is also a buoy forecast looking out 5 days that has couple of different reporting screens, here is Buoy 440025, 30 miles south of Islip.
Check out their Tutorial Page for some in depth explanations. Last, one odd situation is that the site is not https, site is still running in the clear.
