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Builders followed rules, but nesting birds paid the price

More people means more homes rising up in many areas of Florida. But the increase in osprey is one population boom that doesn't get the housing development to match.

By THERESA BLACKWELL
Published June 5, 2005

DUNEDIN - Traditionally, part of the entertainment at Eddie's Bar and Grill has been watching a pair of ospreys across Bayshore Boulevard raise their chicks.

But as restaurant patrons watched Wednesday, workers for the Seagate at St. Joseph Sound condominiums pushed over the dead pine tree with the ospreys' nest still in it.

The regulars at Eddie's cried foul, calling the authorities and alerting the media.

"That's crazy," said Eddie's cook Shirley Weaver of Dunedin. "I mean, I understand progress, but ..."

But, as it turns out, the builders followed the rules.

"They got the necessary permit from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission," said Mike Kettles, a certified arborist with the city of Dunedin.

They also waited until two weeks after the two chicks learned to fly before taking down the tree.

The tree was permitted for removal after nesting season last year. As required by the state, workers built a nesting platform on a pole to replace the nest, which is just south of Wilson Street. But even when all the rules are followed, wildlife must be ever more adaptable to survive.

Marty Armstrong of Armstrong Environmental Services, a consultant to the builder, Walker and Company Construction of Winter Park, said the ospreys returned to nest again this season before workers got around to removing the tree. They had to get the permit renewed this year and wait out another nesting season.

But while the ospreys still had the pine tree, a different pair of ospreys spotted the vacant replacement platform and settled in. Now they are raising two chicks, feeding them slices of the catch of the day.

Next year, the ospreys rousted from the tree might have a right to the platform, but the new pair might see it differently.

"I don't think anyone wakes up and says, "Today is the day I'm going to negatively affect wildlife," said Ann Paul, Tampa Bay regional coordinator for Audubon of Florida. "But so far, that's what we have for a pair of birds."

The good news, according to Dunedin officials, is that some big pines will remain on the property and the ospreys could find one suitable for building a new nest next year.

And the local osprey population, like the market for new condominiums, seems to be growing.

Richard "Hitch" Kamensky, 82, wasn't quite hatched on the site where the condos are under construction, but he was not much more than a toddler when his family built a house about 1925 and moved in. Kamensky still lives nearby and stops in nearly every morning at Dunedin Bait and Tackle, across the street from his old home. There's free coffee and he visits with owner Larry Abbott. Abbott said he throws shrimp to the ospreys and they'll come in if he leaves the door open.

Kamensky said he lived for the beach and the outdoors as a kid, but he didn't see many ospreys then. He did find hundreds of arrowheads and pieces of pottery left by Florida's earlier inhabitants. He lamented that oaks huge even in his childhood were recently taken down.

In 1991, Dunedin voters rejected a proposal to buy, for preservation and park land, the 3 acres where the Seagate condos are being built at a price of no more than $700,000, to be paid for with a property tax increase.

"I just think the city of Dunedin missed the boat when they didn't buy that property," Kamensky said.

Andrew Copening, 43, grew up in Ozona, left the area and returned to live in Dunedin in July. He said he can't believe how many ospreys are in the area now. He stopped in at Dunedin Bait and Tackle on Wednesday afternoon and went out to see the downed pine tree for himself.

The four ospreys, the two parents and their two offspring, had returned, possibly from a fishing lesson. Two were in the air, screaming, circling the area, swooping back and forth, apparently looking for their tree, Copening said.

And on the ground, the other two paced the furrowed earth amid large chunks of the tree that had once been their home.

[Last modified June 5, 2005, 02:15:25]