Osprey Survey

I went out last week to survey the Osprey nests between Nelson and Waneta. A group of us have been surveying these nests for about 14 years now. I check approximately 50 suitable nest sites. This year 11 nests appear to be active in that an Adult is sitting low on the nest. Next month I'll return to these and check to see if there are young visible in the nest. Below are two nest sites I monitor. The first is the where the Slocan River meets the Kootenay River close to where I live in Shoreacres. You can see the gas pipeline crossing and tower.  In the past the Osprey nested on top of the red tower. When Canada Geese used this nest the Osprey built another nest on the pipeline. Geese have used this nest as well. It was blown down during a windstorm last year. Terasen Gas will be removing the pipeline and tower next year (the pipeline will go underground) so they have erected two poles for the Osprey. They de-activated the nest that was on the tower. Fortunately, the Osprey have taken to one of the new platforms and successfully nested and raised young there last summer. This year, they are again using the platform. Yeah!

The nest below is from Waneta. Two summers ago the highway department closed this bridge for repair work. They removed the nest and erected a pole with platform on the other side of the river. The Osprey's never used the platform. This year, you can see they have rebuilt their nest, (pylons be damned!) on the railway bridge and appear to be incubating eggs.

The Osprey have not used the new nest poles that Fortis erected for them. A few years ago Fortis decided it wasn't safe to have Osprey's nesting on their structures so the existing nests were removed. With this new policy, there are now no nesting Ospreys (that I know of) between the South Slocan Dam and Taghum!