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Naturalists hope to lure osprey to area lakes
By Scott Richardson
srichardson@pantagraph.com
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BLOOMINGTON -- Bird enthusiasts erected nesting platforms on Thursday to attract a rare species of fish-eating raptors to three lakes in McLean County.

Osprey migrate through Central Illinois and they’ve been seen this year at Evergreen Lake and Lake Bloomington north of the Twin Cities, said raptor expert Given Harper, who chairs the biology department at Illinois Wesleyan University.

But most osprey, which are on Illinois’ endangered species list, merely pass through the state on their way to summer homes as far north as Alaska, or wintering grounds in Central and South America, he said. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has documented just four currently active osprey nests in the state, according to IDNR’s Randy Nybor.

Harper said three or four years may pass before adult birds use the platforms to lay eggs and rear their young. But if the project flies, organizers from the John Wesley Powell chapter of the Audubon Society hope more platforms will be erected elsewhere in Illinois.

“This is pretty exciting,” Harper said. “If we are successful here, we would advocate that other nesting platforms would be installed at other reservoirs across the state.”

The ospreys’ presence will have minimal impact on fish populations, he stressed.

Illinois lags behind other Midwest states, including Iowa, that have taken steps to attract ospreys, which were native to the region, said Harper. Like Bald eagles, osprey numbers were decimated by DDT, a now-banned agricultural chemical that washed from farm fields into America’s waterways. Once the substance entered fish, it traveled up the food chain and disrupted the ability of raptors to reproduce.

The nesting platforms at Evergreen, Lake Bloomington and Dawson Lake at Moraine View State Recreation Area near LeRoy are perched about 30 feet in the air atop utility poles donated by Corn Belt Energy and installed by workers from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on their off-hours.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service provided one platform. Dale Birkenholz, professor emeritus of biology at Illinois State University and a bird expert, built two others. All have wooden sticks in place to create the illusion that ospreys used the platforms in the past. The hope is the trick will convince a mating pair of ospreys the platforms are safe so they stay to raise their young, Harper said.

The Evergreen Lake platform is on the east side of the lake near Deer Island. The Lake Bloomington platform is near the Bloomington water plant. The Dawson Lake platform is more inaccessible and farther from the water’s edge.

The months of April and May are peak times for ospreys to appear in Central Illinois, Harper said, but some also are seen in fall as they migrate south.

The effort is an extension of other programs to encourage birds not often seen in the region to establish local populations. The JWP Audubon Society and ISU joined together earlier this year to install a nesting box for peregrine falcons on the roof of Watterson Towers, where peregrines have paused in the past during spring migrations. Some individual birds have stayed up to several weeks apparently waiting in vain for a mate.

The Audubon chapter also has erected nesting boxes at sites like the Twin Cities’ Constitution Trail to attract non-raptorial species.

Take a look
Local bird enthusiasts have erected nesting platforms at three McLean County lakes in hopes of attracting osprey, like this pair seen in Virginia. (AP file photo).
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Reader comments on this story - 6 total

Note: All views and opinions expressed in reader comments are solely those of the individual submitting the comment, and not those of the Pantagraph or its staff.

Its hard to soar wrote on Oct 5, 2007 8:39 AM:

" With the Eagles, when you are working with Turkeys who practice illusionism. "

a reader wrote on Oct 5, 2007 7:51 AM:

" way to go Scott Richardson! You made the correction in the article from DEET to DDT! Hmmm... now if only Dan Craft would correct his and say that Spanky HAS performed in B-N sooner than 40 years... she performed at Braden Auditorium in the Happy Together concert. "

Feathers Will Fly wrote on Oct 5, 2007 1:48 AM:

" Why lure endangered birds to the area when their deaths at the hands of the thousands of wind turbines proposed in central Illinois will be classified by the wind company's hired guns, er, bird experts, as "statistically insignificant" according to recent testimony given at the McLean County Zoning Board hearings by Invenergy "experts" regarding the proposal to build the White Oak Wind Farm near Carlock, also near Comlara Park and Panther Creek. "

White Oak Lake, too wrote on Oct 4, 2007 4:24 PM:

" There was an osprey hanging around White Oak Lake last week, too. Awesome bird. "

Lake Dawson!? wrote on Oct 4, 2007 3:19 PM:

" Are they mad? Those endangered birds will be cut to ribbons by the deadly wind farm! Didn't they hear that those turbines kill anything that flies by them? "

Dr. Orangutan Chief Cardiologist Miller Park Zoo wrote on Oct 4, 2007 2:43 PM:

" Zoo Keep! Where is my Fuji Water ? "
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