Photo Gallery: Audubon Society Bands Baby Osprey Chicks at Roseville Park

For the second consecutive summer, a pair of ospreys has built a nest up on top of one of the light poles at the ballfields at Central Park’s Victoria Fields in Roseville.

On Tuesday afternoon, members of the Audubon Society-Minnesota banded two baby chicks as part of a continuing program that is tracking the population growth and movement of osprey in the Twin Cities and across the state.

Mark Martell, Audubon Society director of bird conservation, said ospreys were reintroduced into the Twin Cities in the 1980s and today there are about 60 pairs of the birds that live part of the year in this area. Some of the birds have been tracked as flying far south as Costa Rica and Panama, he said.

Martell estimated the new osprey offspring at Roseville to be about four to five weeks old. The birds eventually will reach a wing span of about five and a half feet, he said.