Coffee with an Osprey.

[Justin_NSA]

Crap! I already cleaned it! Plus I installed an osprey deterrent on each spreader. Dangit!

Just Googled this. What deterrent do you have on the spreaders? Not a skunk I hope!

Ospreys have few natural enemies. Mostly the eggs and the young are victims of predation, but sometimes, even adults especially incubating females are snatched from their nests by owls, under the cover of darkness. Eagles are another avian threat to osprey chicks.
Although adult ospreys fiercely defend their nests, a determined raccoon, fox, skunk or a similar land based predator might raid the nest to steal eggs or chicks, if it is within its reach.
Ospreys tend to avoid these perils by building their nests on isolated spots such as islands, secluded trees, or on top of man-made structures such as nesting platforms, electricity poles and other, similar, hard to reach spots.

 

[Tom J]

Great story, Rasselas. We enjoyed our stay on Cumberland Island much as you did. The wild horses successfully evaded us, though.

 

[Tom J]

Crap! I already cleaned it! Plus I installed an osprey deterrent on each spreader. Dangit!

An osprey took up residence in a derelict boat next to us in Florida. The prevailing wind blew his poop and leftovers onto our deck, so I raised a burgee on a staff up to their masthead, using their main halyard. This seemed to work.
The worst mess I had to deal with was from the cormorants on Cape Cod. Their poop is like cement, and they sit on any available rigging, literally covering the whole boat. It would take an hour or two of cleaning to get the boat ready to sail. A lot of local boats had fishing line strung all over their boats, with pennants and CD discs hanging everywhere. It still took an hour to get the boat ready to go, but was a lot less messy.
Since then, I have installed bird spikes on my spreaders, which works very well. Of course that doesn't stop the sea gulls, who have learned to drop clams and mussels from altitude onto the deck and then eat the meat from the broken shells. The leftover mess is like spots of epoxy.

 

[Kermit]

Just Googled this. What deterrent do you have on the spreaders? Not a skunk I hope!

Ospreys have few natural enemies. Mostly the eggs and the young are victims of predation, but sometimes, even adults especially incubating females are snatched from their nests by owls, under the cover of darkness. Eagles are another avian threat to osprey chicks.
Although adult ospreys fiercely defend their nests, a determined raccoon, fox, skunk or a similar land based predator might raid the nest to steal eggs or chicks, if it is within its reach.
Ospreys tend to avoid these perils by building their nests on isolated spots such as islands, secluded trees, or on top of man-made structures such as nesting platforms, electricity poles and other, similar, hard to reach spots.

So far it seems to be working.