Osprey, osprey … goose!
On the south side of McEuen Park a mother goose and two eggs are visible through the city of Coeur d'Alene osprey cameras. Photo courtesy the city of Coeur d'Alene.
Fans of the McEuen Park osprey nests may have noticed a friend hanging out on the south side camera.
A goose. A Canada goose, to be precise, with her two unhatched eggs.
Year after year, Kootenai County is graced with ospreys, many around Lake Coeur d’Alene. North Idaho has the largest nesting population west of the Rocky Mountains, said Janie Veltkamp, the founding director for the Birds of Prey Northwest.
“It is thanks to our lots of plentiful lakes, shallow waters, and lots of fish. That’s why they thrive here,” Veltkamp said. “They’re quite plentiful, and that’s a good thing.”
A master falconer who spends considerable time rescuing ospreys, Veltkamp said not to fret about the mama goose, as their occupation is a fairly regular occurrence. Coeur d’Alene Parks and Recreation Director Bill Greenwood concurred, noting that geese tend to get the first pick for nests because they return to the area a few weeks before ospreys.
“The geese are more localized. They don’t migrate like they used to,” Greenwood said. “They showed up a couple of weeks before the osprey did, sometime in the middle of March. Ospreys are usually here the first week of April, and they arrived on time again this year.”
Ospreys have had a longstanding affinity to McEuen Park, Greenwood said, tracing back to nesting on the old softball field poles in the mid-1980s, leading to 2005 when a nest caught fire due to wire entanglement.
Today, Greenwood said he can still see a char mark left by the fire on the park’s north pole.
When the city redeveloped McEuen Park in 2013, Greenwood said staff reused the old poles, relocating osprey nests in the process.
“We harvested the material because a biologist told us that ospreys reseed their nests with nesting materials like twigs when they return to the area every year,” he said. “So when we completed the job, we built new boxes on the poles and put the old nesting material back in them.”
There can be a quarrel for dominance — usually in the form of divebombing, Coeur d’Alene City Administrator Troy Tymesen said, if the osprey has set its sights on the nest a goose is inhabiting. Still, he said he hadn’t seen one in the last several years.
“We’ll get an aerial display, who can fly better,” Tymesen said. “Usually, the one with the talons and claws will win the real estate, but right now, everyone is happy.”
Since the park has three available towers, Tymesen said even if a goose is stationed in a nest before the osprey, there are two alternates the raptors can enjoy.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had three for three filled nests. Two for three has often been the most,” he said. “That’s why the Canadian honkers think they can have one. They believe there is room at the inn.”
After the goose eggs hatch, Veltkamp said, mama and her babies will be gone from the nest within one or two days to look for food. Once they relinquish the nest, the ospreys will likely move in.
With the osprey season coming up and strong winds still in the forecast, Veltkamp asked the community to be on high alert for young raptors who have fallen out of the nest. If found, call 208-245-1367 or 208-582-0797.