In 2012 Dianne Hoffman, a retired consultant, became a peeping Tom. For five hours a day she watched a couple, Harriet and Ozzie, who lived in Dunrovin ranch in Montana.
The pair were nesting ospreys, being streamed live as they incubated their clutch of eggs. The eggs never hatched, but the ospreys sat on them for months before finally kicking them out of the nest. “I do think they experienced grief,” said Hoffman, now 81, who watched the birds each day from 3,000km away in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Hoffman was processing her own grief after the loss of her husband, brother and father, and watching the live streams was how she “rejoined the world”.
“It was a very black time,” she said. Although Ozzie died in 2014, she still watches…