NEW ORLEANS — The first two of 13 osprey chicks plucked from their nests last spring to save them from Louisiana's record flooding have been successfully released on a lake west of Baton Rouge. The growing raptors, now boasting 4-foot wingspans, flew off vigorously, authorities said Wednesday.
Rehabilitators took the ospreys by airboat and let them go separately from atop a floating duck blind Tuesday. They flew off in opposite directions. The second flew out of sight. But the first alighted on a stump in the water before chasing a slightly smaller water bird from a dead cypress where it settled and was joined by an adult osprey.
For rehabilitators Donna Gee and Cindy Ransonet, the release marked a thrilling conclusion to a saga that began when the osprey (AHS-pray) chicks were plucked from a nest last May to save them from the dangerous floodwaters and the alligators roaming those waters.
"If it had come out of a movie it couldn't have been any more perfect," Gee said. "When the other osprey in the area came and flew to him, it was just like goosebump time."
The rehabilitators were joined in Tuesday's release in the Atchafalaya Basin west of Baton Rouge by a local guide and by Sgt. Brian Theriot and Senior Agent Jason Marks of the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, who provided the airboat.
Not that it went off without a hitch.
When they went around Cow Island Lake to check on the bird that flew out of sight, guide Kim Voorhies spotted it floundering in the water. Gee said the bird may have believed that an area of floating water weeds was a solid surface.
The group rescued the bird and left it on the roof of a fishing camp in a clearing, along with fish that Voorhies caught with a cast net.
Voorhies, who had worked with his father to secure federal permission for the bird rescues in May, returned Wednesday to check on the bird.
The osprey was up in a tree, he said. "He looked at me and flew off. He's good to go."
Nobody really knows these ospreys' sex. That would take surgery or a DNA test, said Suzy Heck, a Lake Charles rehabilitator who has been caring for them since at her site, Heckhaven Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, in Lake Charles.
Back then, the Morganza spillway had been opened for the first time since 1973 to protect New Orleans and Baton Rouge from one of the Mississippi River's worst floods in this century.
People and wildlife in the Atchafalaya Basin were heading for higher ground, but the chicks couldn't fly. Voorhies said alligators ate some before he got permission to remove the remaining chicks and eggs. Gee and Ransonet, as licensed rehabilitators, were in charge of the removal.
They never saw just how high the water rose. By the time they were allowed back, the Atchafalaya had fallen 11 feet. The bayou from which Voorhies had boated into the lake in May was now several feet below the lake's surface.
It was these birds, not the species, that were in danger. Osprey are common worldwide, found almost anywhere there's a body of water with woods or forest around it and fish in it. They fly low over the water, plunging talons-first to grab fish.
Four chicks died at Heckhaven and six are still being rehabilitated. The remaining chicks may be released later this month.
"We're trying to get them now to do a little flying, flap their wings, build up a little strength in their wings," Heck said.
A third osprey was brought to Cow Island Lake on Tuesday but was being returned for further rehabilitation in Lake Charles. Its wing feathers were damaged, either as it was put into the portable kennel in which all three were being trnaported, or during the 130-mile trip from Lake Charles.
"I said, 'I don't think we should let it go,'" Ransonet recalled. "It was flapping its wings. It nosedived into the water."
The feathers will grow back, and bent or broken feathers sometimes can be repaired or replaced without waiting for the bird to molt, Heck said.
AP photographer Gerald Herbert contributed to this report.