Few Ohioans have seen an Osprey snag a fish. The large fish hawks, with six-foot wingspans, were extirpated from Ohio and have not nested until recently. Five pair nested in 1999.
In 1996, the Ohio Division of Wildlife (ODOW) began transplanting Osprey nestlings from other states to five locations in Ohio in an effort to establish twenty Osprey nests by 2010. Relocated nestlings are fed in cages on poles, called hack boxes, or hacking towers, until they fledge. Food offerings assist fledglings until they become independent hunters. Young Osprey migrate to South America and return two years later to scout for nesting sites within 30 miles from their “birth” tower. Of the ten birds nesting in 1999, only one had been Ohio-raised, others were from neighboring states.
Lacking parents to protect them, hacked Osprey make easy prey for Bald Eagles. For this reason, even Delaware County, with its four large reservoirs, is not suitable for hacking since eagles nest there. But, conservationists there have been trying to entice nesting fish hawks since 1982!
The first nest platform in Central Ohio was erected on April 10, 1982 in Delaware State Park. Rangers Dave Nicholas and Ken Hay, and I, used a back hoe to lower an electric pole into the ground. Shelf brackets held a three foot wide octagon twenty-four feet above a mowed peninsula in “Red Cross Cove,” a secluded pristine bay north of the marina named for canoe lessons taught there during the 1960’s and 70’s.
By 1996, the neglected plywood platform stood rotting above a young forest. The state’s osprey program motivated Dick Phillips, Harry Condry, Matt Wallschlaeger and me to replace the park’s decaying platform with one made of treated lumber and galvanized hardware. During a hot and humid afternoon on July 27, 1996, we lugged a canoe portage cart loaded with equipment to the secluded site. It took us five hours to renovate the nest site and cut the encroaching trees to give Osprey a clear glide path to their future nest.
During lively conversations that afternoon, the site’s good and bad features came into focus. Disadvantages included speedboats and jet skis roaring past the cove, and the lake’s fluctuation of 36 feet during flood control required a spot on land. Osprey will nest over land, but their strongest preferences are nests over water, followed by nests on islands. On the plus side, Osprey hunt Delaware Lake during migration and the original pole appeared ageless; the new platform will last another 30 years. Osprey will nest at Delaware Lake, but when, is anyone’s guess.
A new pledge emerged during that hot afternoon: we vowed to give fish hawks better nesting opportunities by constructing three new nest platforms in Alum Creek Lake near Kilbourne. Alum Creek’s pool fluctuates only six feet, perfect for nests over water. Also, the lake’s northern end is a quiet no-wake zone visited by bass boats, kayaks, and canoes. During summer pool the area teems with fish as indicated by numerous Great Blue Herons stalking their prey. Best for bird watchers, Hogback Road follows a ninety foot cliff that overlooks the site, and a sizable parking lot nearby guarantees that binoculars and scopes will point toward Osprey nests below.
We agreed that installing poles in Alum Creek Lake would not be easy. Each winter, the lake pool is lowered exposing thick layers of sediment. The deep muddy deposits make walking almost impossible. Dick and Matt learned this the hard way even before the mud flats emerged; during an expedition to select sites, a submerged log flipped their canoe. The muck made self-rescue almost impossible. They laugh now, but choosing pole sites was a sticky challenge for them.
During Thanksgiving weekend, Dick and I built three forty inch square nest platforms. A month later, we plodded through mud and dug a test hole in the sediment. After the posthole digger reached four feet, we drove a pipe to seven feet to make sure bedrock wasn’t hiding to block our efforts. We found no bedrock.
Part of our preparation was winning permission for the project. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alum Creek State Park, and the Ohio Division of Wildlife enthusiastically received a seven-page document, “Proposed Plan to Install Three Osprey Nesting Platforms in Alum Creek Lake.
As winter intensified, we patiently waited for temperatures low enough to freeze not only the mud, but also the flowing stream on the exposed lake bottom; we had to cross the creek channel to reach two of the sites. Our wait was short; weather forecasters predicted a “deep freeze” during the January 18 weekend. We thought we had prepared for everything. We were wrong.
The quest for poles forced us from “Plan A” to “Plan B.” Early in the project, GTE in Marion, Ohio had offered telephone poles, and some were only six inches across. We planned to retrieve the poles with a truck and hay wagon, and use muscle and push boards to install them “Iwo Jima” style, all in one day. That was Plan A.
But things moved quickly from A to Plan B on Friday, January 17. Low temperatures and high winds canceled school. (Matt, Dick, and I were science teachers at the time.) I drove to Marion to select suitable poles, and found some at the bottom of a tall pile. Extracting them in the freezing cold seemed impossible. With much doubt, discouragement followed me back to Delaware until I listened to Dick’s message on my answering machine, “Consolidated Electric Cooperative has two poles for us.” (Thanks to efforts by Bill Cackler, another science colleague.)
I grabbed a copy of our proposal and drove to the co-op’s office. I was elated when they wanted to deliver the poles. Within several hours the company’s crew unloaded two massive electric poles, each 34 feet long, along Hogback Rd. Later, Dick and Matt arrived and we sawed each pole down to twenty-six feet. Eleven inches across, each pole weighed more than 600 pounds. Matt’s truck dragged them up the road to where each was across from its installation site on the lake bottom. The three of us barely lifted one end of each timber over the guardrail, letting it roll down the bank to the ice below. Now, our new problem was, “How were we going to lift these “sequoias” into vertical positions on the lake bottom?” Dick Phillips had the answer: Plan B, a plan that we were not prepared for.
Dick had used the “tripod system” in the military to install telephone poles in areas inaccessible to vehicles. We headed for a farm supply store to buy chains, bolts, cable, and a pulley needed for the new plan. The immediate challenge of the new plan cemented our resolve. Money flowed freely – the Osprey had taken over – the vision of nests above Alum Creek Lake reinforced our resolve – project completion at any cost! Osprey mania!
We left the farm store to buy 4″ x 4″ posts for the tripod. We wanted twenty-footers, but the lumber company only had posts fourteen feet long. After Dick and I unloaded the timbers at my place, he left for his home, and I proceeded to the hardware store to buy a four foot extension for a hole auger. The extra 3/4″ pipe made the auger capable of gouging an eight inch hole 7½ feet deep, the depth required for large posts in sediment. But since the hefty poles needed twelve inch holes, I made a “mud-slicing hole enlarger” by bolting a blade from a conventional post hole digger to a long wooden handle. I fashioned a water dipper from a large coffee can and an old hoe handle for baling water from the holes during digging. Plan B made sleep late, but easy.
Wind chills nearing thirty below zero made the Saturday morning blustery and brutal. Roger Koch, Jack Lane and Jerry Geist joined our team and before the seven of us tackled the many tasks, we questioned our sanity – we weren’t crazy, just under the influence of Osprey Mania!
After we crossed the frozen channel and used the auger, “slicer” and dipper to dig two holes, we worked like horses roping and pulling heavy electric poles across the ice and frozen mud to their destinations. We left the lake bottom at mid-afternoon agreeing to meet at 11 am the next day, Super Bowl Sunday. Matt and Dick left to buy our most essential item, a boat trailer winch.
After Dick arrived at my place early Sunday morning, we drilled holes for a chain in the tripod timbers, bolted the winch to one of its legs, fixed a hook to cable, etc. We tied the tripod legs to my canoe rack, and put the canoe portage cart inside my hobby car. Other materials were hauled in Dick’s truck.
At the lake we rolled the canoe cart with our strange equipment across the frozen lake flats to our most distant site. We propped up the pole with the cart and I pre-fitted the platform and fashioned a coon guard from aluminum flashing. Harry used his ax to bevel the pole’s base, and Dick directed the tripod’s assembly. Everyone was in constant motion; it was too cold to stop. I managed to record the action with two cameras.
Excitement grew as the tripod was rigged for its first hoist. Several short lifts were needed to find the pole’s center of mass. We had wrapped a chain around the pole and hooked the tripod’s cable to it. The cable laced through a pulley at the tripod’s peak to tie the pole to the winch. As Dick cranked the winch, the pole rose under the tripod. Harry pushed down on the suspended pole’s base, rotating it into a vertical stance. Dick reversed the winch’s gear, and the pole’s foot descended below the lake floor. The system worked beautifully. There were cheers.
We installed the first pole without its platform. Jack saved us hours of work by climbing the ladder and flipping the forty pound platform over his head into position. We decided it would be easier, especially for Jack, to attach the next platform to its pole before placing it.
Installation was smoother at the second location due to lessons learned earlier. It was near dusk when we trekked across the frozen turf to the parking lot. We were exhausted. The numbing cold, the setting sun, the joy of accomplishment, all combined to make the moment spiritual. Barely audible, we talked of Osprey.
During the following week, the electric company delivered the third and last pole. When the team reassembled on a much warmer Saturday, we noticed the creek had thawed, and we were glad we did not need to cross it. It took us only three hours to install the third platform. The mud thawed to “fudge” before we finished, reminding us that braving the coldest weekend of the year to install the first two platforms had paid off. (Since then, weather has not been cold enough for an encore.)
Dick and I returned in mid-February to build decoy nests and attach mailbox numbers to the posts. We shuttled my 17′ Grumman canoe across the flowing creek. With long ropes tied to both ends, I paddled to the opposite shore and got out. Dick pulled the canoe back to him and loaded it with bundles of sticks, the canoe cart, and the extension ladder. I pulled the canoe back to me and unloaded the cargo. Dick pulled the canoe to him, got in, and I pulled the canoe back to me. Several motorists stopped on Hogback Road to watch the show. Since we made the platforms “ladder-friendly,” building decoy nests was fun and safe and future biologists will find it easy to attach leg bands to nestlings.
Each spring, rains raise the lake pool several feet submerging the mud flats and isolating the platforms. Canada Goose ganders launch attacks from the platforms as they guard their families. Occasionally, Great Blue Herons stand on the nest sites for unknown reasons. Have Osprey used the platforms? No, but several of us have had “Osprey moments.”
My adrenaline rush took place on a sunny May 9, 1998. I was between monitoring bluebird trails when I caught a fleeting glimpse of a fish hawk high over the lake. I parked my car near the cliff and waited. After ten minutes, an Osprey appeared high in the sky north of #1. It was cruising south directly in line with the platforms. As the bird descended and leveled off, I felt my heart beating “outside my chest.” The large bird added wing beats to arch over #3 while scrutinizing it. It didn’t need to land for the event to be evenly ranked with when I saw my first bluebird in 1968. And how will I react to nest building?
Continued success of the ODOW Osprey program has our team restless. We’re scouting other locations in Delaware County, and we hope to put our tripod rigging into action soon. Several of us have traveled to Deer Creek Wildlife Area to watch sub-adult Osprey feed newly hacked young. Certainly, more nest platforms will be needed throughout Ohio as the state’s efforts yield breeding pairs. Delaware County will be ready.
What motivates us to help Osprey? I can’t say for sure, but several patterns are worth mentioning. All but one of our team were over fifty years old in 1997, shattering several assumptions about what men do on Super Bowl Sunday. We practice and prescribe a basic conservation tenant preached to us during our youthful days of hunting and fishing: “When you take, put something back.” Not surprisingly, four of us monitor extensive bluebird trails, and all hike, canoe, or backpack wilderness areas where a reverence for the wild and majestic has threaded its way through our personalities. The adventure of helping nesting birds has always been challenging and fun, but simply stated, we want Osprey in our world.
Osprey Mania is contagious. Catch it!
Partial update: We added perches to the platforms prior to the 2001 season and our initial practice of building decoy nests is not needed to attract nesting Osprey. Also, decoy nests can be counterproductive since nest material on the platform can attract Canada Geese that can hinder your efforts for Osprey.