Calling All Ospreys

Nan Bartow sent this write-up and these photos from a neighborhood osprey platform-raising.

By noon, Saturday, Feb. 25, a newly raised osprey platform was standing firmly erect in the sunshine amongst the tree stumps, live trees and bushes on the east side of South Pond at Beaver Pond Park. The platform had lain on the ground for three weeks in front of Nan and Bill’s house where Bill had constructed it and had attached it to a 25-foot cedar post that would hold the platform high in the air over the swamp. 

The first crew arrived at the house at 9 a.m. to lift the platform and post onto the trailer that was hitched to Chris Ozyck’s work truck. Nan started to take photos. Max, Jim, Bill, and Chris lifted the heavy structure into the air and onto the trailer while Nan steadied the platform at the end of the pole. Bob joined us at the house, and then we all went to the pond where we met up with the rest of our group. Patrick, Paul, Bob, Semi, Aly, along with Max, Jim, Bill, and Chris carried the structure to the pond where it was placed on the ground. A rope was attached to the bottom end of the pole, and the first members of the swamp team, holding the other end of the rope, canoed across the pond to the site that had already been prepared last week by Chris and Bill by digging a 4 foot deep hole in the mud and peat bog. Aly ferried more of the team members and tools and planks across to the site. One half of the swamp team spread planks onto the marshy ground behind the platform site and took one end of Chris’s long rope with them, being careful to walk on the planks where there was water underneath. In the meantime, the other half of the swamp team had pulled the floating structure across the pond with the rope, after it had been lifted into the water. Max and Patrick, in their chest waders, stepped out into the water to steady the platform, and, with the help of Bill, Chris, and Aly, they carefully lifted the pole over the fallen tree limbs and lined the end of the pole up with the hole. Chris untied the rope from the bottom of the pole and tied it to the top of the pole with a special knot.

The team members at the water’s edge (Chris, Max, Patrick, Aly, and Bill) lifted the upper part of the pole as high as they could so that it would start to slide into the pre-dug hole while the other half of the swamp team (Jim, Semi, David, Paul) started pulling on their end of the rope. Slowly the bottom of the pole slipped into the hole while the top end, which included the platform itself, rose up into the blue sky. 

Members of both teams helped steady the pole that was wavering in the gusty winds while others helped fill in around the pole with mud and dead branches. The crew used three eight-foot 2 x 4 planks in a tripod formation to brace the pole so that it would stay straight up in the air by itself. Nan continued to take photos of the whole process. Aly was as excited to hammer the braces as she was to paddle the canoe. All the team members worked smoothly together to complete the job.

The land team and visitors kept watch over all our land belongings. Jeanie Graustein brought black plastic bags and collected lots of plastic and paper litter that lined the shore of the pond. (Now that the litter debris separator is functioning, we hope to have less litter flow into the water from the storm water conduits.) Visitors from the land side included Judy Hopkins, who was picking up trash, and Richard Olmsted, who was walking his dog. Both are members of FoBPP.

Special thanks to URI’s Chris Ozyck for guiding us through the whole process. Special thanks also to Bill Bidwell who built the whole osprey nest platform himself. Chris Ozyck asked me to include this quote that he wrote: “ Often the wind beneath Nan Bartow’s wings, Bill Bidwell outdid himself with his attention to detail in selecting and constructing this wonderful perch.” The plans that Bill used were designed by New Haven Land Trust’s Dave Reher and were kindly shared with us by Amy Zvonar through Chris Randall from the NHLT. Without Amy’s original thorough planning, we might never have gotten started on this project. We could not have accomplished what we did without the generous and strenuous efforts of the swamp team and the land team.

Our group included people from Beaver Hills, Edgewood, Westville, Quinnipiac, and East Rock. It’s exciting to see Parks groups willing to participate in other Parks groups’ projects. Thanks to everyone involved including encouragement from Bob Levine at the NH Parks Department.

To quote Max Lambert who will be conducting a turtle study in the Beaver Ponds this summer, ​“It was great to see all those folks getting dirty for the park.”

Now let’s hope a pair of ospreys decides to make Beaver Pond Park their spring and summer home.