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Osprey on nest near Jackson, Wyoming.

(MARCUS SCHNECK, The Patriot-News)

The Pennsylvania Game Commission wants to know how many active osprey nests occur across Pennsylvania, and the agency is seeking volunteers to help with the count.

To encourage participation, the commission has created an online survey form, available through the Pennsylvania Game Commission website.

Through the survey the commission hopes to determine the location of each active nest in the state, as well as the kind of structure each nest is built on and the type of nearby water that the ospreys are using for foraging.

Also known as the fish hawk, river hawk and fish eagle, the osprey is a fish-eating bird of prey.

After decades of population decline due to unregulated hunting and egg-collecting, but mostly the toxic effects of insecticides such as DDT, by 1986 only one osprey nest could be found in Pennsylvania.

A reintroduction program was run from 1980-96, and today ospreys are known to nest in more than 20 Pennsylvania counties.

After the reintroductions commission staff conducted annual surveys of the nests, but insufficient funding and staff hindered that effort.

A 2010 survey found 115 nests, but missed several that were known to the birding community but not reported during the survey.

Other than the lower Delaware River and the Ohio River, most of Pennsylvania's osprey nests are associated with reservoirs or impounded sections of rivers.

Most of the nests in Pennsylvania are built on human-made structures, such as communication towers, transmission towers or nest platforms.

Information gathered through the online survey will be used to update the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program database and allow the commission to better understand the potential for managing the species in Pennsylvania.

Commission biologists wrote a recovery and management plan for the state's breeding population of ospreys and is changing its management to watershed-based clusters.

Deadline for volunteers to submit their survey forms is Aug. 31.