“The birds never laid here this year,” said Watts, near the mouth of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. Watts has a more intimate relationship with ospreys than most people have with a bird — he has climbed to their nests to free them from plastic bags, fed them by hand and monitored their eggs with telescopic mirrors. The birds, which breed in many parts of the U.S., are failing to successfully fledge enough chicks around their key population center of the Chesapeake Bay.