Branford’s High-Rise Residents

Ospreys have taken up residency for the third year atop a power pole along a busy thoroughfare in town, returning from their winter digs in Central or South America.

Heading west on West Main Street, near the new Amtrak railroad bridge, you can see the nest atop a light pole if you glance left when stopped at the stoplight. Sometimes one of the birds serves as a lookout.

The pair come and go, undisturbed by the traffic activity below.

Ospreys, like eagles, were endangered due to DDT use and have rebounded following its ban. 

“It’s really a testament to how well they’re doing,” said Bill Horne, one of the town’s leading environmentalists and a longtime member of the Branford Land Trust. ​“There are lots of platforms in town, but they nest where they want to.”

“We’re not planning on doing anything about them for the time being,” said Mitch Gross, the spokesman for Eversource. ​“The lines there are de-energized. There’s no power running through them. The Ospreys seem to know that.

“A platform is still available for the ospreys to consider moving over at the wastewater station about a mile away if they choose to use that,” he added.

The Branford Land Trust supplies and maintains 30 nesting platforms around the town’s salt marshes. About a half a dozen are maintained privately. Permits from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection are required for the platforms, and they must conform to DEEP’s siting and construction standards. The nests are monitored throughout the spring and summer; the platforms are constructed and maintain in the winter when the nests are not occupied.

According to the Cornell Lab of Orinthology, it’s not unusual for ospreys, which are members of the hawk family, to build their untidy stick nests atop telephone poles and other man-made structures such as channel markers, duck blinds, and nest platforms designed especially for them. The elevated nests keep the birds safe from predatory mammals.

Barbed pads on the soles of their feet allow them to easily grip fish and they have a reputation for easily catching their food source. They can’t dive below 3 feet and thus prefer shallow waters. Despite the apparent urban locale of Branford’s birds, the GIS map shows ponds and streams on either side of the railroad tracks. The search range for food is a maximum of 12 miles from the nest. Judging by their frequent comings and goings, they are finding a good supply of food close by.

Ospreys are noted for traveling long distances. The Cornell site reports that within their 15-to-20 year life span, they may travel 160,000 miles. Equipped with a satellite transmitter, one osprey travelled from Martha’s Vineyard to French Guiana, South America in 2008.

Osprey eggs do not hatch all at once, so the older, stronger chicks may dominate the younger ones if there’s a shortage of food. The birds, which mature at 3 to 5 years of age, lay three eggs on the average with an incubation period of 35 to 42 days. The chicks can move around the nest at about two weeks and preen and exercise their wings after a month until they gradually lift off the nest (“helicoptering”) and take their first flight. The fledglings stay close to the area and are still fed their parents as they improve their skills. Read more here.

The Branford Land Trust Osprey program has fixed displays and offers presentations to community and school groups.

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