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Thursday,
March 26, 1998 Home to RoostBy Tina Traster
To encourage ospreys to roost along the Hackensack River, Public Service Electric and Gas Co. this week erected a nesting platform atop a utility pole at its Hudson Generating Station in Jersey City. The site is a spooky post-industrial swath of parched grass and common reed, but it could be a welcome mat for ospreys, which begin building nests and mating in the next few weeks. "During the past two years, osprey have been seen in the area, but their attempts at nest building on utility poles have failed," said Richard F. Dwyer, a PSE&G spokesman. The company plans to erect 10 platforms along the Hudson and Hackensack rivers, he said. "The species is returning now, so we are trying to take steps to ensure their survival." Naturalists and bird watchers agree that ospreys, 25-inch-long, fish-eating hawks with six-foot wing spans, are returning to the lower Hackensack and Hudson rivers because the water is cleaner and the fish supply is more plentiful. Osprey numbers were reduced this century in North Jersey because the pesticide DDT, later banned, weakened eggshells and dramatically reduced birth rates. DDT would get trapped in river sediment from runoff, and the pesticides accumulated in smaller fish that the ospreys feed on. PSE&G officials last year discovered failed attempts to build nests on a transmission tower at the Hudson Generating Station. "There are no appropriate nesting structures in the area, and we would prefer that they do not use transmission towers," Dwyer said.
PSE&G plans to erect another nine nesting platforms: two in Laurel Hill Park in Secaucus; one in Ridgefield Park at the Bergen County Generating Station; two in Lincoln Park West in Jersey City; a second nest at PSE&G's Hudson Generating Station; another at its Kearny generating station; and two in Liberty State Park near the Hudson River. The platforms were built by students from the Hudson Liberty Council's Boy Scouts of America and the Urban League of Hudson County's youth build program. Three of the platforms will be used to educate the public with explanation panels, but all the nests will be monitored, Dwyer said. Nesting activity will be reported to the New Jersey Division of Fish, Game, and Wildlife's endangered and non-game species program. Through a rigorous state program to encourage threatened or endangered species to stage a comeback, ospreys have been a success story in New Jersey over the past two decades. But most of the osprey nests so far have been found in Raritan Bay, Sandy Hook, and points south. Island Beach State Park is one of the largest osprey nesting sites on the East Coast.
Some speculate that the birds -- probably young offspring from Raritan Bay -- traveled north to find a less-competitive environment for feeding and breeding. Osprey have proliferated say state officials -- the number of known nests has grown from about 50 three decades ago to 235 today -- because of a ban on pesticides and the state's endangered-bird management program. Copyright © 1998 Bergen Record Corp. |
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In
a spot no one would call paradise, man is giving
nature a helping hand.
So, this week, on a wind-whipped
spring day a mile west of the generating station at the
water's edge, a PSE&G worker was hoisted by a cherry
picker so he could hammer a 3-foot-by-3-foot
wood-and-wire platform atop a 32-foot wooden pole. Then,
he attached two planks of wood that formed a V shape in
order to create outposts for the male ospreys, which
perch above the nest to ward off predators.
Bird experts say it
is common for ospreys to venture beyond their colonies
and make unsuccessful first attempts to set up home. 
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