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98 home • PORT A sparkling Barnegat Bay on one side and wetlands with wading, white egrets on the other: this is my view as I travel the road to my favorite waterfront restaurant. Atop the crossbeams of a telephone pole, I notice a pile of sticks and debris looking like a bad haircut. For the casual summer visitor, this extension of poles rising above the marsh reeds has nothing to do with AT&T or Verizon. As I near the pole, a white head with a dark band and hooked beak peeps out and watches the road. I'm glad to see an osprey nest so close to the street but saddened to know it won't be there next summer. It will be replaced by a peaked, tent- like structure to discourage the birds from nesting on top of the poles and too close to the road. Rachel Carson's classic book, Silent Spring (1962), made people aware of the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment. In particular, DDT (dichlorodiphenetrichlo- roethane) helped rid the shore of pesky mosquitoes but killed other wildlife, i.e. birds, bees, and fish larvae. The residue from the spray remained in the fish that the osprey ate, which caused their eggs to have thin shells that would break under the weight of the nesting osprey before they'd hatch. By 1968, after many studies on its harmful effects, DDT was banned. By 1974, because of habitat loss and DDT, the osprey population was down from about five hundred birds to just fifty-three, thus placing them on the Endangered Species List. From Osprey To Giraffe by Frank Finale Pete McLain (1926-2014), a legend among environmentalists and the former deputy director of the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, worked to bring the osprey back from near extinction. He spearheaded man-made nest building and egg replace- ment. Pete and volunteers replaced the DDT-contaminated, thin-shelled Jersey Shore eggs with healthy osprey eggs from Maryland. A feat in itself! The volun- teers climbed lad- ders to reach nests high off the ground in perilous weather and switched the eggs while the ospreys emitted high-pitched cries and swooped down at them. The transfers all succeeded. Sometimes if an egg hatched before it was placed in a nest, the volunteers placed the newly hatched chick in the nest anyway, and the mother osprey cared for it too. Environmentalists and volunteers built man-made nests for the osprey—twelve-foot poles with platform baskets—so the birds would have a more secure place to nest. Since 2004, the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey have installed over one hundred nesting platforms throughout the state, concentrating on Barnegat Bay, Little Egg Harbor, and Great Bay. In the spring of 2015, I went to my best friend's house for dinner and some TV. I found her seated at the kitchen table entranced by her iPad Mini. The table was empty except for her iPad and the TV, silent with black screen. The stove and microwave Continued on page 97 Ospreys Bay and Bandit. photo by Sandy Bonagura