POULSBO — While Jim Kaiser can rebuild an osprey nest in 15 minutes, the birds will be the final judges on whether the new nest and platform will be home when they return in April.
Kaiser, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist, and the Kitsap Audubon Society as well as Puget Sound Energy teamed up Tuesday afternoon to relocate the osprey nest at Strawberry Field by Poulsbo Middle School.
A pair of ospreys, also known as seahawks, had been nesting on an 80-foot light pole at the soccer field for about five years, coming back each spring after migrating south for winter.
While the lights are near a small pond that is stocked with fish, the birds’ main diet, it also gave the hawks a vantage point to watch for eagles, which try to eat young osprey.
What the osprey couple didn’t take into account was the fire hazard of building a flammable nest on hot lights.
There also was a concern about debris and excrement falling onto the field and people.
“Right here we have kids playing soccer in the splatter zone,” said Gene Bullock, Kitsap Audubon Society member.
Platforms close to the old nest site, such as the one in Poulsbo, have a 95 percent success rate, Kaiser said. The platform was erected in the southwest corner of the field.
Using sticks and materials from the old nest also help the high success rate.
PSE donated the pole and manpower to install it as well as three deterrents on half of the field lights. The other three lights are not double sided, making it difficult for birds to balance sticks and build nests there, Kaiser said.
Overall, the platform project and deterrents costs about $8,600, Bullock said. The local Audubon Society donated $1,000, individual donations raised about $600 and the Poulsbo Rotary Club gave $400. After PSE’s pole and manpower donation, an anonymous donor supplied about $5,000, more than half of the expenses, Bullock said.
Although the old nest wasn’t near power lines, removing it and putting up the deterrents without a nesting platform could have sent the osprey into an even more hazardous situation near power lines, said Mel Walters, with PSE’s avian protection program.
A nest near power lines can start fires and cause outages, which are expensive for PSE and its customers, as well as dangerous for the birds.
One power outage could pay for several nest relocations, Walters said.
“If I can get an osprey nesting platform, it means they won’t nest in power lines,” he said as he pointed out some potentially appealing places for the birds to build a new nest by power lines across Hostmark Street.
After putting the pole in place, Kaiser shoveled the old nest off the light and gathered up the sticks with the help of workers. He then built a new nest on the platform, which is about 47.5 feet in the air.
The new nest will be smaller than the old nest, which the osprey added to each year.
The old one was about 5 feet wide and about 2 feet deep. And it was cleaner than most Kaiser has seen, meaning there was little trash, fishing line or bailing twine that can wrap around birds and kill them.
Having humans check on the new osprey nest, making sure there is no harmful debris, will be an important part of ensuring they return each year, Kaiser said.
