Ospreys in the Snohomish River estuary now have five new places to roost.
Installation of five new pilings for the raptors to use for nesting, delayed by complications earlier in the week, was completed Friday.
Three of the pilings were installed Thursday and two more on Friday, said Bill Lider of the Pilchuck Audubon Society.
One is near Cedar Grove Composting on Smith Island, while the other four are in the mudflats near Priest Point.
“It went more or less smooth,” Lider said.
The plan had been to install five, 60-foot, 10-ton concrete pilings donated by a Tacoma company. The first one to be installed on Monday, however, would not go deep enough into the mud to be stable and had to be removed.
Five shorter, steel pilings were then purchased for a total of about $15,000 to replace the concrete pilings. Officials with the state and Whatcom Waterfront Construction of Bellingham, which did the pile driving, could not be reached Friday to confirm how the cost was split.
Earlier, Pilchuck Audubon and the Snohomish County Marine Resources Council had put up $8,000 each, and Boeing put up another $10,000, for a total of $26,000, toward transportation and installation costs for the concrete pilings. The state Department of Natural Resources pitched in part of the contractor’s cost, said Lisa Kaufman, who works for the department.
Between 20 and 26 nesting pairs of the fish-eating raptors make their homes in the estuary, believed to be the largest colony of saltwater nesting osprey on the West Coast.
The birds historically nested in trees, but began nesting on groups of pilings in the river after their shoreline habitat was logged.
The past few years, many of those old pilings, once used to anchor rafts of logs waiting to be sawn into lumber or made into pulp, have fallen down. Others are rotting and could fall at any time, Lider said.
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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