A pair of nest­ing osprey at Ferris has inspired the uni­ver­sity to take action in a project that has become an inter­net sensation.

The Osprey Web Cam Project was ini­ti­ated in the fall of 2008 in hopes to broad­cast images of nest­ing osprey for the Ferris com­mu­nity and sur­round­ing area.

However, the project has drawn in view­ers from out­side the area as well. Numerous grade schools and nature cen­ters have incor­po­rated images from the Osprey Web Cam Project into their cur­ric­ula and images from the web cam have reached out over­sees to coun­tries such as England, Germany, India, and El Salvador.

The nest is located atop a light pole in the park­ing lot behind the Swan Building.

The pair cur­rently has three eggs and a fourth was expected to be laid over the week­end. The incu­ba­tion period is around 37 days from the time the first egg was laid, which was April 14.

Dr. Paul Klatt, one of the mem­bers of the group that over­sees the project, said he first came up with the idea for the cam­era setup from a pere­grine fal­con cam­era project where he went to grad­u­ate school in North Dakota.

Klatt said the pur­pose of the project is to take advan­tage of a unique sit­u­a­tion that allows for real time behav­ior to be brought into the classroom.

Nest build­ing, courtship, feed­ing, egg lay­ing, incu­ba­tion, hatch­ing, and chick feed­ing behav­ior are among some of the detailed obser­va­tions by stu­dents in biol­ogy courses such as Animal Behavior, Natural History of Vertebrates, and General Biology I and II.

“Ferris has every­thing to gain from [this] project,” said Klatt. “In addi­tion to class­room enhance­ment and cur­ric­ula use off cam­pus, I believe the project reflects a pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness that almost becomes contagious.”

Klatt said osprey are also often used as an indi­ca­tor of how envi­ron­men­tally healthy a par­tic­u­lar area is.

He said, “In other words, if the cam­pus osprey are doing well, per­haps we are doing some­thing right out there.”

The res­i­dent osprey and the Osprey Web Cam Project were recently fea­tured in the “Jack Pine Warbler,” a mag­a­zine pub­lished by the Michigan Audubon Society.

Information regard­ing osprey as well as images from the Osprey Web Cam can be observed at fer​ris​.edu/​o​s​p​rey. n