Look up, Robert Bouchard often tells passersby on Northeast Fourth Street. Look up at the osprey nest. Some do. Some look at Bouchard instead.
“I keep telling people to look up there, and they keep on looking at me like I’m an idiot,” says Bouchard, 57, of Renton.
A truck driver, Bouchard looks around a lot. He often looks up at the nest — a scramble of sticks atop a tall wooden telephone pole. The pole sits on a small grass hill in back of fenced-in metal poles and in front of a power substation at Northeast Fourth and Union Ave. Northeast.
Bouchard checks out the nest after his afternoon visits to 24 Hour Fitness, in the complex across from the substation and pole.
Bouchard thought the four nesting birds were eagles, until a fellow gym-goer said no, the smaller white and brown birds are osprey. Several others agreed.
Bouchard often spots all four osprey, which he suspects are two adults and two young.
“I’ve seen the chicks and the mom and dad popping up and down with food for them,” Bouchard says.
“Most the time I just see their little chicken heads poking out,” he adds. “’cause they have bald heads, they look like chickens.”
The nest is across the street from a shopping complex, and houses and apartments line both street sides. The chainlink fencing the substation is adorned with warning signs: “Danger High Voltage,” “Notice No Trespassing,” “Danger Hard Hat Area.” Bouchard is puzzled by the bird family’s property choice.
“It’s just odd that they built a nest up there, in the traffic…” he says.
Not that odd, says Chris Anderson, a wildlife biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).
Although osprey subsist primarily on a fish, Anderson says the birds often nest in urban areas, in treetops, atop cell-phone towers, even on powerline towers and construction cranes. The raptors prefer trees with broken tops, Anderson says.
Nests atop cell-phone towers are so common that Anderson says cell-phone companies typically write bird-protection measures into their policies and procedures.
Cell-phone towers don’t endanger nesting birds, Anderson says. But he says electrical towers are a different matter and can cause electrocution. But even electrical towers are now designed to prevent such tragedies.
Anderson says Puget Sound Energy actively manages ospreys to prevent electrocutions. Puget Sound Energy and cell-phone companies also sometimes opt to move osprey nests, he adds. WDFW assists with such moves, which require federal and state permits.
Anderson says people sometimes build nesting platforms for osprey, such as the perches in Redmond’s Marymoor Park and Tukwila, erected by the City of Tukwila.
While osprey are not a state-priority species like the great blue heron or the bald eagle, osprey are a state-monitored species, which means WDFW collects data on the birds.
Osprey are also protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which protects all migratory birds and their eggs, feathers and nests. This act was meant to end the commercial trade of birds and their feathers. The act also covers what Anderson call “malicious activity.”
“Essentially you can’t go out and shoot a robin, you can’t shoot an osprey, you can’t collect their feathers, you can’t collect their nest without a permit, you can’t do away with their nest,” Anderson says.
He recommends people report malicious activity toward osprey to the local state patrol office.
Osprey typically start migrating north in April and May and spend about three months nesting. In King County, breeding season is from about April 1 to Sept. 30. After that, osprey will start heading south for the winter.
So the Highlands osprey family should be around a while longer. Until then, Anderson recommends leaving the family alone — or at least staying about 300 feet away from its nest.
“They can be pretty vigilant around their nest,” Anderson says.
Bouchard plans to watch the osprey until they fly the nest.
“It’s just something kind of cool,” he says. “I think it’s just a nice thing to happen here in Renton.”
Emily Garland can be reached at emily.garland@rentonreporter.com or 425-255-3484, ext. 5052.
