Utility Poles A Handy Nesting Place For Osprey, But Not Always Safe

     Every morning, usually around 6, Nancy J. Copley of Gull Road, Falmouth, begins her day by taking a walk around Salt Pond.
     Last Monday, her daily jaunt started off like most others, as she soaked in her surroundings. “I always see interesting natural things or I count the rabbits, which there are more of these days,” she said.
     Her enjoyment on this particular morning was derived from watching a fledgling osprey that was taking flying lessons from its parents. In an e-mail, she wrote, that as the young bird circled its nest it would attempt to land on various perches in the area, including trees and several telephone poles.
     “It would stretch its legs out, swoop down, but couldn’t quite get it all coordinated to land,” she wrote. “Finally, it got everything right and landed on a pole on Elm Road by the bike path.”
     Yet, all was not right, and the osprey—following what Ms. Copley described as a loud buzz lasting roughly 30 seconds that was accompanied by a wisp of smoke—fell to its death in a beach rose bush below as its parent watched from the nest above. It had been electrocuted.
     This makes two incidents in less than a week in which an electrical pole has had an adverse effect on an osprey. On Friday afternoon a nest built on a power line in North Falmouth caught on fire.
     Thanks to efforts by officials from the Falmouth Fire Department, the Department of Natural Resources, and the electric company NStar, the fire was contained, and the salvaged nest was placed on a newly erected osprey platform near the telephone pole.
     Those efforts were successful, DNR Assistant Director R. Charles Martinsen III said, with the ospreys returning to the nest within three days of the accident.
     In the incident that Ms. Copley witnessed, the osprey was not so fortunate. As a research associate in the biology department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she admitted that she tends not to get upset when animals die. However, she expressed shock that the bird had died in such a manner.
     And she looked at this as a way to perhaps influence change in practices by the electric company. “I thought that perhaps with this particular nest there may be some way to cover the poles at the top,” she said. “It looks like NStar [personnel], or whoever put the osprey platform up, made an effort to get the birds off the high tension wire, where it had built a nest previously.”
     In terms of his company’s approach to ospreys, NStar spokesman Michael P. Durand said its staff have been proactive in ensuring the birds are protected.
     “Osprey survival in southeastern Massachusetts and the Cape is due, in large part, to the efforts our company has made over the last 20 years,” he said. “That has helped bring them back from being an endangered bird.”
     Whenever his company receives a call that there is an active nest on a utility pole, he said, they make every effort to relocate it someplace safe. They have done this with two nests already this year, he said.
     In some cases, he said, line workers have had to relocate a nest when there are fledglings there, with the adults protecting their young. “It gets a little tricky to do that work, but we are dedicated to it,” he said.
     An osprey being electrocuted by a power line, he said, is a rare occurrence. “I have been around here for almost 30 years and maybe heard of one other besides this one,” he said.
     However, Tom French, assistant director at the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, said, these happen every year, primarily to birds of prey, which include osprey, hawks, and bald eagles.
     At one time ospreys were listed as a species of special concern by the state, with roughly a dozen remaining after they were nearly forced to extinction because of the chemical DDT. Eventually, Mr. French said, the osprey population recovered, and their current numbers are more than 300 nesting pairs, enough to take them off the endangered list.
     The birds, he said, will nest anywhere, whether man-made or natural. Chimneys, boats, microwave towers, radio towers, and movable cranes—“We had to deal with two of them on cranes that had been stored for a period of time,” he said—all have been home to ospreys.
     Also on that list are electrical poles, where ospreys will invariably build a nest every year. They have no preference for the type of electrical pole, ranging from the public to the private and from the wooden to those of galvanized steel, Mr. French said.
     This has the potential for danger, he said, with a nest often catching fire after a rain storm when an electrical surge typically occurs. 
     Bigger companies like NStar, he said, make it a priority to move these nests, which is completely legal and encouraged by the state, when a nest is on top of a pole. A fire, he said, can blow a transformer, causing a power outage for those served by that line. “That is why power companies do not want nests on top of their poles,” he said.
     Because ospreys tend to become fixated on a particular spot, they will often return to a power line, if moved. For this reason, he said, power companies will put up an alternative nesting platform nearby, often using telephone poles that have been retired, for them to nest. NStar crews then will put an object, such as a metal cone, on their electrical poles, he said, to prevent ospreys from nesting there.
     Electrocution, he said, often occurs at the end of wires which are normally not insulated. If a bird lands on one wire and then makes a connection with another wire with any part of its body, causing a circuit, that could spell its doom.
     In terms of threats to osprey, Mr. French said it is not a particularly serious issue in the state. “It is not something we worry about in this state at the population scale we have,” he said. “There is not a pattern in mortality for us to really worry.” 
     In regard to this latest incident, he said, the electrical company could look at the wires and see if they can be sleeved, particularly if this becomes a common occurrence at this specific site. Overall, he agreed that NStar, and other electrical companies, have been at the forefront of protecting the species.
     Outside of dangers from power lines, Mr. French said competition over food supply and becoming entangled in monofilament fishing lines are other threats.
     Osprey and other birds of prey, he said, are also extremely susceptible to pesticides and the state is currently concerned over high levels of mercury being found in these animals. While the levels are still not high enough to cause any measurable impacts, they are something his department is monitoring.
     “Beyond that ospreys live pretty safe lives,” he said. “For the most part they are doing pretty well.”