The Once and Future Osprey

Join us at the Museum for an illustrated talk by Dr. Paul Spitzer on the rise of osprey populations over the past 70 years and their potential fall due to menhaden shortage.

This talk is presented by the ornithologist who led the campaign to restore ospreys in the northeast in the 1960s and 1970s.

When: Sunday, July 12, 2026
Time: 4 pm
Place: In person at the Museum, 2nd floor and virtual via zoom
Reception to follow.

Ecologist Paul Randolph Spitzer has a lifelong love affair with the East Coast of North America.  His scientific studies began with failing Ospreys in 1968, when they were severely impacted by DDT in some areas.  He was then a protégé of bird-people Roger and Barbara Peterson, and a biology student at CT’s Wesleyan U.  DDT’s destruction of bird life, reported by Rachel Carson in “Silent Spring”, demanded more evidence and proofs.  Thus Paul devoted his 1970’s decade to detailed Osprey biology studies, for his Cornell U. doctorate.  He happily documented initial northeastern Osprey recovery, NJ to MA, as DDT passed out of ecosystems.  His PhD thesis predicted Ospreys’ subsequent success in many parts of the world.  Paul says: “That decade based at Cornell was the making of me as a scientist and a humanist”.

In the 1980’s, between international conservation projects in India, Central America, and New Zealand, Paul gradually made the Choptank River–on Maryland’s eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay–his home for life.  Chesapeake Osprey population studies anchored him here, by our “Choptank Osprey Garden”.  Currently, Chesapeake  Ospreys are under detailed study as bioindicators of their Menhaden prey base depletion.

Paul is currently completing “Dark of the Loon”, his ecologist’s memoir about three decades of nonbreeding Common Loon study, 1988-2020, along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.  He seeks a friendly editor and strong publisher for his book.  He can tell you about his long and happy boater’s life of Osprey and Loon study cruises.