Sunday, March 22, 2009

Working on the Osprey nest sites in Jamaica Bay...

Today, I went out into the Jamaica Bay Marsh, with Don, Eva, Barbara and Denis to install and repair Osprey Nesting sites. Our first stop was at JoCo Marsh; once there, we offloaded the necessary equipment. The platform that we had dropped off at the site on the 16th was still there and so we moved it closer to the nest site in preparation for our work. The objective at this site was to cut the platform post to a length that was more manageable and so Denis got to work on shaving off the required length. A few slices of the chain saw and the post was cut to size. We then positioned the platform on the post and nailed/screwed everything in place. A couple of braces were added to further shore up the nest and Don added a Swallow nest box right below the platform. We briefly did a quality review and then it was back to unloading back our equipment and on to our next site. On the way to our next stop, we came across Oyster Catchers and Great Cormorants that gave us great views for photographs and those of us who had our camera gear in tow took as many photos as we could.
At the next site, we examined the platform from our bins and determined that the nest was fine and so we moved on to a third site. At this location, the looks from the bins suggested that repair work was necessary and so we docked and offloaded our equipment and went through the cycle of doing an analysis of the nest site. We found that the nest only needed shoring up and so Denis went up the ladder and did some repair work. By then the high tide window was shrinking and so we wrapped up and headed back to shore. It was a good afternoon’s work, which left us with only one Osprey platform to install and one Barn Owl Box, which Don and I hope to setup tomorrow. Share with SociBook.com Bookmark and Share

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