By Kate Garsombke
For the Wausau Daily Herald
Monday, September 29, 2003

STEVENS POINT - Throughout its rehabilitation, the osprey with the broken wing was known to wildlife specialists only as Whiting, the place the bird had been found.

When Marge Gibson and others released the mended raptor Friday afternoon back into its habitat on the Plover River, she offered words of encouragement. "Take care, chickie-poo," she said as the bird swooped into the woods and across the river.

Gibson had spent the past month and a half measuring the male osprey's recovery at the Raptor Education Group Inc. in Antigo. The center is caring for about 150 raptors and other birds from around the state that have been injured.

An angler saw the male osprey floundering Aug. 9 on the Green Circle trail in Whiting. State Department of Natural Resources Ranger Brad Kildow rescued the bird and took it to the raptor center.

The bird had been illegally shot, presumably from its nest atop a power pole next to the Green Circle, Kildow said. Its radius had been broken near the joint - an injury similar to a human's forearm being broken near the elbow.

No one has been arrested in the shooting.

Kildow said wildlife specialists recognized right away the bird had a chance to make a full recovery. "It was a nice healthy bird, other than it had a broken wing," he said.

The osprey known as Whiting, which is at least seven or eight years old, wasn't named while it was at the center because it "underscores to the public we don't own them," Gibson said.

Now that the raptor has been reintroduced to its habitat, it soon will make its migratory flight south for the winter. "He's headed to Argentina, I'm sure," Gibson said.