Baling twine…..disaster

 We finally got the chick down from a cell tower where it was in trouble

. It’s been over 24 hours of hanging there thrashing, and our hearts breaking more and more each moment it struggled. For some reason all the calls to the cell company were unfruitful yesterday. A million thanks to Debbie Jordan , a Twin Cities Metro Osprey Watch volunteer extraordinaire, for all her work and for never giving up. Today she finally got in touch with someone at the cell company in charge of environmental stuff who said no one told her about this situation yesterday. Well, long story short we were finally connected to Meridian Blue Construction who sent a crew to rescue the chick. The chick was still alive but sadly, another chick was dead in the nest. Killed by baling twine. A deep thanks goes out to every one at Meridian Blue….Alicia and Bob, the climbers Jake and Will for doing heroic work rescuing this poor bird. I cannot thank them enough. Also thanks to Karen, a transport volunteer from The Raptor Center, for taking the bird to TRC for medical help. We will keep you posted about it’s condition when we hear something.

What must we do to get people to dispose of that baling twine safely so these things don’t happen???? This stuff is lethal to many kinds of wildlife. Ospreys are attracted to it because of its bright color, and bring it to the nest and it never deteriorates, it shreds into fine, cutting material. People MUST pick it up and dispose of it appropriately. I post gruesome photos to make people aware of just how awful this stuff is. I know I am preaching to the choir here.

Anyway just as I finish up that situation I hear the Little Arb chick jumped out again….apparently frightened by some activity below. So I called our hero at the Arb, Jim Elskamp, and he found our little friend and got him back in the nest. A special thanks again to Jim! Our little osprey should be fledging now but I have not seen much flapping of his wings…..so he needs to do some work to build his strength. He is the correct age for fledging and his feathers should be hard penned by now. Time for some prefledge workouts buddy!

So a million thanks to everyone at Meridian Blue, and to Jim at the Arb….and especially to Debbie Jordan for her perseverance in kicking butts until we got the help we needed.