Once a week, Dottie Gutaj drives to within 500 feet of two active osprey nests – one in Plainfield, the other in Lisbon - and spends at least 15-20 minutes during each visit, peering into her binoculars to make sure all is well with the nesting pairs of fish hawks that she’s been monitoring since early April.

“You fall in love with these birds,” Gutaj admits. “They’re huge, with seven-foot wingspans.”

Gutaj is in her third year as a volunteer for Osprey Nation, a large, citizen science-based organization, founded in 2014 by The Connecticut Audubon Society. A semi-retired oncology nurse of 34 years, Gutaj regards her osprey stewardship as fun and purposeful.

“I watch to make sure the ospreys are healthy. Is their nest stable? Do they have fledglings? If so, how many? And are the chicks developing normally, fledging out within four to five weeks,” she explains.

Data from her observations and other volunteers is fed upwards to CT Audubon Society and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. And if there are any problems, like a nesting platform needing repairs, or a chick falling out of a nest, which is rare, Gutaj said there are “repair and recovery teams” that can assist the volunteers.

The goal of Osprey Nation is to “create a long-term record of data that will give the conservation community a better understanding of the health of Connecticut’s osprey population.”

But they need more volunteers - especially now, during the height of the raptor’s nesting season, according to Nick Ferrauolo, Osprey Nation’s project coordinator.

As of June 28, for example, there were 876 osprey nests in Connecticut, monitored by 361 assigned volunteers, with 146 nests still unassigned.If you’re interested in becoming a volunteer, Nick Ferrauolo can be reached at osprey@ctaudubon.org.

It’s interesting to note that 50 years ago, ospreys in Connecticut and in the rest of the nation were almost wiped out by DDT, an insecticide that thinned their eggshells and prevented ospreys and other raptors from successfully reproducing young.

Thankfully, in 1972, Congress banned the dreadful chemicals, and ospreys, bald eagles, and peregrine falcons, to name a few, have been making a slow, but steady comeback ever since.

What makes ospreys so beloved by so many people?

“They’re charismatic, they’re abundant, they’re large, they’re easy to spot, easy to identify, and they nest in prominent locations,” suggested Brian Hess, a wildlife biologist with DEEP.

“One of the useful things about ospreys,” Hess added, “is they are a sentinel species. That is, by keeping an eye on them, we’re also keeping our fingers on the pulse of water quality and other environmental issues that might be going on.”

Finally, I asked Dottie what she hopes will happen to ospreys? Her answer was thoughtful and touching.

“I want the average person that might not be in tune with the environment to be more conscious and mindful about how important it is for our birds to be safe.

“And maybe we’ll get some bird lovers interested in ospreys, as well,” she said.

Bill Hobbs is a contributing writer for The Times and Estuary magazine. He lives in Stonington and can be reached for comments at whobbs246@gmail.com.