Osprey chicks hatch on Daintree crane nest live stream

Each year for more than a decade, a pair of ospreys have built a nest 47 metres in the air, on the top of a crane in the Daintree Rainforest.

The crane is similar in structure to those used in construction, but this one is part of a research observatory run by James Cook University (JCU) in the heart of the World Heritage-listed rainforest.

Researchers are confident the same osprey pair returns to the exposed location each year, and the birds have again become proud parents to two squirming chicks.

Daintree Rainforest Observatory manager Johan Larson said the chicks began life "pretty helpless" after hatching sometime between last Thursday and Saturday.

"They struggle to hold their necks upright but, pretty quickly, once they've had a few meals of fish, they start getting pretty strong," he said.

Mr Larson said the parents took turns flying the roughly 2 kilometres to the ocean to fish, bringing meals back several times a day until the chicks reached fledgling age.

"Then slowly, slowly they start practising [flapping] their wings and, after about two months, they start their first flight — [they] usually just hover a little bit above the nest,"

he said.

Mr Larson said the ospreys had been extremely successful parents, raising chicks on a live-streamed video every year since cameras were installed atop the crane about 11 years ago.

Crane's clearer future

The future now appears more secure for the Daintree Rainforest Observatory and the crane where the osprey nest — two years after it was revealed JCU was considering closing both.

In 2024, the university announced it was considering decommissioning the crane, which had been on the site since 1998.

In a statement this week, deputy vice-chancellor Jenny Seddon said a consultation process found ways to increase use and public engagement with the observatory and crane.

"For example, last year, there was an increase in the number of undergraduate students who used the facilities as part of their degree program, along with a rise in the number of domestic high school students who visited," Professor Seddon said.

She said the crane was in good working order, with its next 10-year certification review due in 2028.

"There is no indication at this stage that this date would be the end of useful life for the crane," she said.

Mr Larson said he expected the crane would need some significant servicing or replacement, possibly in 2028, but was pleased it and the observatory would continue to operate.

He said despite advances in technology like drones and satellites, a lot of research in rainforest canopies was best done on a crane.

"[The canopy is] where you get most of the photosynthesis, pollination, fruiting and flowering, and you have quite different communities of insects and other types of wildlife up in the canopy compared to on the ground,"

Mr Larson said.

"Without a canopy crane, that work is very difficult. You have to use climbing equipment, or you can use things like slingshots to get branches down for leaf samples and things like that."