Park will add osprey cam to its Web site

Soon, online visitors to Glacier National Park's Web site will be able to watch a pair of osprey raise chicks.

The Park is working on installing an osprey cam at the St. Mary Visitor Center. The ospreys are nesting on a platform that was put up by Glacier Electric Cooperative a few years ago to keep the birds off live powerlines that were nearby. The nest is about 200 feet from the center.

Ospreys like to nest on broken-off tree tops and power poles fit the bill. Unfortunately, when birds try to nest on the poles, they can get electrocuted. To stop this, power companies put up nesting platforms nearby and then put spikes near the power poles to keep the birds off them.

Ospreys are a migratory bird that primarily eat fish. They spend their winters from Texas to Costa Rica and summers in northern climes. They generally return to the same nest year after year.

They're often mistaken for bald eagles, but are smaller and their white head is marked with a brown stripe.

Ospreys range in length from 21-24 inches, and have a wingspan of 54-72 inches, according to the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Field Guide.

They lay between one and four eggs and feed their young a diet of fish throughout the summer.

The young fledge and generally can fly and leave the nest in July and August.

The Park's osprey cam won't stream images but will refresh frequently, about every 30 seconds to a minute, said Park Webmaster Bill Hayden.

Hayden said a monitor inside the visitor center will update images more frequently — about once a second. Or you can just go outside and watch them. They're easily viewed with a set of binoculars from the visitor center.

Last year Glacier's Web site saw 10 million visitors and about 1.7 million went to the Webcam pages.