Published in The Cape Cod Times on April 30, 2021.
By: Jeannette Hinkle
Photo: Ron Schloerb
Kevin Friel stood on the side of Thomas Landers Road in Falmouth looking skyward.
It was a soggy April afternoon, and cement truck after cement truck rumbled past en route to construction companies further down the road, drowning out the calls of a pair of ospreys circling a nest atop a utility pole beside the Route 28 overpass.
Every few minutes, the birds soared over the nest to drop the sticks they carried in their hooked talons. They were preparing the nest — balanced on two parallel cross beams over the pole’s wires — for the eggs the female would likely lay in the next few weeks.
Over the din of the trucks, Friel called the nest emblematic of an annual battle between the ospreys and Eversource, which owns and maintains approximately 56,500 utility poles across Cape Cod, according to the company.
When ospreys nest on a utility pole, where the nest could catch fire and cause a power outage, Eversource typically responds by removing the nest and installing a deterrent atop of the pole. That prompts the ospreys, which have a 7- to 30-year life span and return to the same nest every spring, usually with the same mate, to build a nest one pole down, Friel said. The process repeats.
The nest that Friel was gazing up at appeared to be the third that pair of ospreys have built on utility poles along Thomas Landers Road, he said. The next utility pole down from the nest was topped with an orange traffic cone, and the one after that was crowned with a T-bar-type contraption, both examples of deterrents installed by Eversource to prevent ospreys from nesting.
Often, Friel said, the deterrents don’t work, and ospreys just build nests on top of them if there’s not another pole nearby.
But on Thomas Landers Road, a whole line of poles stood free of deterrents a few hundred feet away, so instead of trying to build on the deterrent, the ospreys just moved one pole down.
Friel is a wildlife photographer, and usually he avoids capturing signs of man in his pictures. But for his newest project, he’s cataloging every osprey nest in his hometown of Falmouth, which means he’s photographing utility poles almost every day.
As he photographs, Friel updates a digital map with the location of each nest, adding notes to each coordinate specifying what type of structure the ospreys are nesting on.
“Where’s my list,” said Friel, his thick auburn beard partially obscured by a Patriots mask, as he fiddled with his phone. “Here it is. Osprey nest in tree, tree, tree, tree, tree. Boat rack. Building, building, building. Chimney. Light tower, light tower. Now we get into utility poles: pole, pole, pole, pole, pole, pole, pole, pole, pole, pole.”
How did we get here?
Ospreys are considered a conservation success story.
According to estimates from Mass Audubon, the Cape was down to just one to four pairs of ospreys by the 1970s because of use of the pesticide DDT, which prevented the birds from laying healthy eggs. Between New York and Boston, roughly 90% of breeding osprey pairs disappeared, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
But when DDT was banned, ospreys began to rebound. From 1966 to 2015, the osprey population in North America grew by 2.5% each year, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey.
The last census of ospreys on Cape Cod, conducted by Mass Audubon 10 years ago, found there were about 500 nests along the peninsula’s coastline, with a large concentration of nests in Falmouth and surrounding towns.
The birds, sometimes called fish hawks because of their marine-based diet, were helped along locally by people such as Gil and Jo Fernandez, who installed nesting platforms off-Cape near the Westport River in an effort to move the birds away from the woods, where the still fragile osprey population was vulnerable to predators, including raccoons and great horned owls.
“They’ve been growing exponentially for many years because of these platforms that people put up,” said Mark Faherty, science coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. “They’re nesting on artificial structures where predators can’t get them.”
Faherty said that over time, well-intentioned humans have essentially trained the birds, whose offspring replicate the nests where they were hatched, to prefer the platforms to their natural nesting locations: trees.
The problem is that the platforms are attached to poles.
“And we have an electrical grid that is comprised almost entirely of things that look like osprey poles,” Faherty said.
Enter Eversource.
Eversource spokesperson William Hinkle said the company this year conducted “extensive patrols” of the local electric system between January and March, removing dozens of nests and installing deterrents and platforms in advance of the ospreys’ return.
When Eversource removes a nest but doesn’t provide an alternative nesting pole, conflict usually ensues, as evidenced by the recent battle on Short Beach Road in Centerville.
Residents step up for ospreys
Candi and Larry Hurwitz, full-time residents whose family has lived on Short Beach Road since the 1970s, eagerly await the return of the neighborhood ospreys each spring. The nest where the Short Beach Road pair lived, situated atop a utility pole on the street, had been there for 20 years, Hurwitz said.
But this year, when the ospreys returned at the end of March, the Hurwitz family noticed the nest was gone. In its place was what Candi described as two metal X’s, osprey deterrents installed by Eversource after the nest was removed by workers.
The ospreys frantically circled the pole, attempting to rebuild the nest on top of the deterrents. Eversource then returned to the site, knocked down the nest the ospreys were in the process of constructing stick by stick and installed more X-shaped deterrents.
“Eventually they went up and put a cone and four X’s, and that seemed to at least slow them down,” Candi said. “Then they came back and they actually took out the crossbars on the pole so there is no place for the ospreys to nest.”
The family, which was fond of the neighborhood osprey pair, called the Barnstable Natural Resource Department for help. Natural Resource Officer Christopher Nappi put the couple in touch with Chris Walz, property manager for Mass Audubon’s Mid-Cape Sanctuaries.
When he got the call, Walz knew he had about a week to install an alternative nesting platform near the utility pole if the pair were to have a successful reproductive season. Working with the Hurwitz family, Walz erected a 16-foot pole and platform that is bolted to the couple’s seawall.
Candi said last week that while the ospreys are still trying to nest on the utility pole, as well as neighborhood chimneys, they are also spending time on the new platform.
“We’re hoping eventually they’ll just by process of elimination say, fine, we’ll take this one,” Candi said.
When neighbors were watching the distressed birds swooping around the pole where they once nested, Candi said they were upset at Eversource for ripping down the nest.
“At first everybody was like, ‘Why did Eversource do this? Why didn’t they tell us in the fall? We could have done something about it,’” Candi said. “But, like Eversource was saying, they have their own pressures to make sure that there isn’t a power interruption.”
“From our point of view, since the nest had been here for 20 years, we didn’t see it as an emergency, but from their point of view, it absolutely is, because like they pointed out to us, what they build nests with is basically kindling, and all you need is a spark and you’ve got yourself a pole fire,” she said.
The argument resonated with Candi, who three years earlier had seen a large osprey chick touch the power lines as it re-entered the nest, electrocuting it.
On Cape Cod so far this year, there have been eight power outages affecting more than 3,000 customers caused by ospreys, according to Eversource. In 2020, ospreys caused 52 power outages affecting nearly 56,000 customers; in 2019, the birds caused 30 outages affecting more than 20,000 customers, the company said.
Conservationists say long-term solution involves Eversource
Local osprey conservationists agree that it is dangerous for ospreys to nest on utility poles, and that those nests need to be removed, both to prevent the birds from dying of electrocution and to eliminate the threat of local osprey-caused power outages.
But they also think Eversource, as the owner of thousands of utility poles on Cape Cod, has a responsibility to address the recurring problem holistically, rather than with a piecemeal, nest-by-nest approach they say does nothing to retrain the birds to nest in trees again.
“There’s no easy solution, but it’s clear to me that in a lot of cases they could be doing things differently and doing better by the osprey and not just perpetuating the problem,” Faherty said, adding the company has not shared a public-facing document outlining its process for dealing with osprey nests on utility poles.
“They just don’t seem to be doing some common-sense things to keep it from happening,” he said. “They’re not putting the resources into it to actually be able to respond, because there’s multiple instances where a nest is catching on fire year after year and there’s still no permanent solution.”
First, Eversource needs to commit to installing utility poles that have been demonstrated to be nest-resistant when it comes time for the company to replace a pole, Faherty said.
“There are well-established designs of electrical poles that would not be attractive for ospreys to nest on them,” Faherty said, adding that in his conversations with Eversource representatives, it was unclear that was the company’s policy on Cape Cod.
Faherty said the second step in a long-term solution to the osprey problem is for Eversource to install deterrents that are actually effective at preventing ospreys from nesting on poles that don’t need to be replaced.
With new osprey-resistant poles gradually going up across the Cape, and remaining poles still free of nests blocked by osprey deterrents that work, conservationists could begin retraining the species to once again nest in trees.
“The idea is to maybe cut out branches from a tall pitch pine, screw a pallet in, and then maybe the osprey find it and use it,” Walz said.
The offspring of the pair that nested in the tree would then likely seek out trees to nest in when they return to the Cape to hatch their own chicks, Walz said. Then, the chicks of those ospreys would do the same.
“Each successive generation would then use a tree,” Walz said. “They don’t care about the pallet. They just know that they’re in a tree.”
The entire process of retraining ospreys to prefer trees over utility poles likely would take decades, conservationists said, but the problem of ospreys nesting on utility poles would eventually be solved.
“Most of the poles are potential nesting sites for an osprey, so what is Eversource going to do about that?” Faherty said. “It’s been a problem for years, and they know it. Do they have a plan? They need an osprey czar on Cape Cod trying to figure this out. They’re just not able to be responsive to it, and it’s their infrastructure, so it’s really their problem.”
Hinkle, the Eversource spokesperson, said ospreys represent one of the biggest challenges for the company on Cape Cod, adding that the company is working to identify deterrents that work and replace utility poles with a design shown to be less attractive to the birds.
The company is constantly evaluating new deterrent methods, Hinkle said, adding that Eversource is “trying potential solutions we learn from fellow utilities and conservationists or through our own efforts to innovate an effective deterrent.”
“The best deterrents are new forms of construction, and we always consider osprey when performing regular maintenance or upgrading the system in the area,” Hinkle wrote. “We know that single-arm pole construction is less attractive for ospreys to nest, and we’re currently using that whenever possible with new construction.”
Each osprey situation poses a unique challenge, Hinkle said, adding that “there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to this issue.”
“Balancing the need to ensure reliable service for our customers with protecting osprey is one of our top local priorities, and we will continue working with local officials, environmentalists and the birding community to improve and refine our processes so that we can achieve our shared goal of protecting osprey without impacting reliability,” Hinkle said.
Beloved and burning
Faherty said the osprey is a unique species whose future on Cape Cod requires concerted investment. They’re majestic, beautiful birds with eyesight so good they can spot a flounder through choppy water, dive down and pin the fish to the bottom before wrestling it up and bringing it back to their nests, he said.
“They’re still pretty much universally liked because they’re so impressive,” Faherty said. “They’re incredible, fascinating animals that inspire a sense of wonder, and they’re part of our world, or we’re part of their world.”
They’re also icons of the area. Friel said that if Falmouth had a town bird, it would have to be an osprey, for which Buzzards Bay was named.
“Falmouth loves these birds,” he said, adding that people often give their neighborhood pair names. “People think it’s hysterical that there’s a pair on a light post at the Walmart parking lot. There’s a new nest at McDonald’s, right on the telephone pole. There’s one at Kappy’s on a pole.”
The day after Friel stood on the side of Thomas Landers Road listing the town’s most well-known nests, the Kappy’s nest caught fire, causing a power outage. A few days after that, as the male attempted to rebuild the nest in time for his female mate to lay eggs, he touched a live wire. The osprey was electrocuted, causing another power outage.
“Eversource just left his body there,” Friel said. “Now, the female is up there screaming for someone to come build her a nest. It’s heartbreaking.”
Faherty said Eversource and those who love the ospreys need to collaborate to figure out how to stop the endless, sometimes tragic cycle of ospreys nesting on Cape Cod’s utility poles.
“It’s a problem that we own because we’ve trained them to nest on these sorts of structures, and so we’re luring them in to be burned alive,” he said. “That is not something anybody should support, so it’s a problem that we need to solve.”
“I get that it’s a difficult problem, but I would just like to see them put more resources into it,” he added. “Because everybody’s frustrated, and what’s going on now is not doing anybody any good. The birds, the electrical customers, anybody.”
Jeannette Hinkle 