Ever since I can remember, there has been an Osprey nest on a powerline pole, between Fish hole Pond and Grass Pond. It is an active nest, most years. The nest was built on a cross beam of an H frame structure, right above the power lines.
I havve done some work on Osprey nesting over the years, while at NYSDEC and also at the NY Power Authority. Often times we worked to relocate Osprey nests off transmission line structures. Often times, we worked in conjunction with National Grid (or Niagara Mohawk, in earlier years….). The thing about Osprey is that they return to the same nest, year after year.
National Grid removed the Osprey nest I mentioned above. It did pose a fire/outage danger given its proximity to the power line. But then NGrid did the greatest thing, unsolicited. They put a prefabricated Osprey nesting platform on top of the same pole structure where the Osprey nest had been.
Nicely done. The one thing I might have done differently– I would have put some of the old nesting materials on the new platform. That is a quibble– and folks are split over the effectiveness of such a move.
