Osprey Project

For

Crooked Lake A project by the Board of Directors of the Crooked Lake Property

Owners Association, Columbia City, Indiana

Osprey - Wikipedia defines Osprey as a large fish-eating bird of prey, also called

the fish-eagle, sea-hawk, river hawk and fish hawk. More than 99% of its diet is

fish. Its height is over 24 inches and has a wing span of almost 6 ft.

Every Summer the residents of Crooked Lake in Columbia City, Indiana, have no-

ticed visiting, but not nesting, Ospreys hunting in the waters of their lake. No

nests have been seen and a few residents asked: “Why not?” And then they added:

“What would it take to attract a pair of nesting Ospreys to our lake?”

Thus began the quest to learn more about this magnificent raptor. It is a unique

bird of prey in that its talons, which in most other raptors comprise three toes for-

ward and one backward. In the Osprey, the third outside toe can be bent to the

back effectively providing it with two toes forward and two in back. This is

thought to allow for greater effectiveness in carrying its captured fish. Out of all

the myriad of hawks, owls and eagles, i.e., birds of prey, only the great horned owl

has the same trait.

An online search on Ospreys showed that there are several Osprey cams scattered

around the country, monitoring the nest and viewable on a live cam website.

However, there seems to be less than a dozen country wide, and none in Indiana.

Most are in the Maryland, Eastern Shore area and also out in some western states.

The Osprey is very tolerant of human activity, much more so than the bald eagle,

which is very sensitive to noise and the hustle and bustle of human activity.

So our Board Of Directors decided we would take up the challenge of trying to at-

tract a pair of nesting birds to Crooked Lake in Whitley/Noble County, Indiana.

But we wanted to share this effort with everyone, so it was decided to fully equip

the nesting platform with electronics to monitor the bird’s activity 24/7 during the

5 month nesting season from March to July. In order to do that, our first priority

was to erect a suitable nesting platform. This report is about the first stage in our

path to share the story of the Osprey. The live feed of the nest will be fed to a web

site and people can monitor the inter workings of Osprey life at their leisure in live

time. It is hoped that critical archival footage will be selected and available to be

viewed in case the viewer would want to see the most recent activity in the nest, in

case they missed it when it occurred live. We hope to capture nest building, egg-

laying, egg-hatching, feeding, raising, trial flights, and eventual departure for the

migration to South America.

Stage I - Construction of the platform

A four foot frame of treated 2X4’s and a

cross frame of 2X6’s was lag screwed to-

gether. A suitable sized mesh of hog fencing

donated by the local TSC store was fixed to

the inside. Vertical 2X2’s, 12 inches long,

were fixed at each corner and at midpoint.

Sticks and small limbs were woven in and

around the framework and upright 2X2’s to

give an appearance that a potential for a

nest is here, and therefore attract a young

pair of nesting Ospreys. Once selected, the

nest would then be finished by the birds.

Angled braces were make to secure the nest

to the 60 foot telephone pole installed cour-

tesy of the local REMC.

The nesting platform and connected camera

arm were transported to the site by John Meier

and Chuck Farris. Wt. = 125 lbs.

Site preparation was done by (L-R) Al An-

derson, Jay Hilgenberg, and land owner and

electronics expert, Tim Dygert.

X marks the spot on the point of land chosen

for the pole, because of its incredible 270 de-

gree view of Crooked Lake

Mike Defrue (L) of REMC lends his sup-

port to the final testing of the equipment.

The platform is walked out to the point of

ground, where it will be attached to the pole.

The nesting platform is attached to the end of

the pole by the residents team of Jay Hilgen-

berg, Tim Dygert, John Meier and Al Anderson

The REMC crew of Doug Sauers, Justin Alex-

ander, Jared Boggs and Todd Myers deliver the

70 foot pole to the site. The entire REMC crew

was extremely professional in every aspect of

the day’s activities. Kudos to all of them.

The 70 foot pole was shortened to have a

cleaner attachment area for the platform,

and a bolt was fixed through a suspicious-

ly weak area.—Professional suggestions.

The crew starts the auger down into the

soil, not knowing what they might encoun-

ter. Fortunately, it was mostly lake bot-

tom.

It took several minutes for the auger to reach the nine foot level. The auger had to be

removed several times for the crew to manually use their shovels to clean the blades of

the sticky and gooey muck that attached itself to the auger blades. Again many thanks

goes to the crew for their professionalism and courtesy. They made it look easy.

The truck’s boom is lifting the 3800

pound pole and platform up to let it be

guided seemingly effortlessly to the hole.

Truck maneuvering the pole into po-

sition above the hole.

(L-R) property owners Tim and Kati Dygert, lake as-

sociation volunteers Al Anderson, John Meier, Jay

Hilgenberg, and Chuck Farris watching as the pole is

guided to place. It was a treat to watch.

The pole being slowly lowered to

place.

Hopefully one day we will appreciate

fully, the majesty of the birds of prey

and how they live. This is Crooked

Lake’s contribution.

The four-man REMC crew fine-tuned the

placement and direction of the camera angle

relative to the sun traveling across the sky.

(L-R) Al Anderson, Jay Hilgenberg, Kati Dygert, Tim Dygert, Doug Sauers of REMC,

Chuck Farris, and Aileen and John Meier.

Now let’s all think positively that we’ll have a pair of nesting Os-

preys real soon. (Nesting season begins in March)

Crew finishing up and pulling out leaving one

60 foot-tall Osprey nest and a grateful group of

Crooked Lake residents.