A Tale Of Ospreys, Power Companies, Schools and Cooperation.

This is a tale of ospreys, school districts, and power companies ...

For the 25 years that I have called Levy County home, there have been ospreys using an old light pole, in the old ball field at the Cedar Key School. The weathered old pole sits on the edge of the school property, sandwiched between an open ball field/parking area and the salt marsh.

I don't know when the lights atop the pole quit working and that's not important here anyway. The important thing is the old pole has been used by ospreys for years.

Our story, my part of it at least, begins last Tuesday during the teacher preplanning week. As I was passing through the front office, our sweet office ladies asked me to take some photos of the osprey nest for the district office.

Hmmmm ... that seemed odd... so, I asked...

"What do they want them for?"

"They need them for a nest removal permit. They're taking down the old light poles."

"Why? That nest has been there for a couple of decades at least."

The answer involved safety, and at a school with precious children, it is hard to argue on the other side of safety. It seemed that the old lamps and some of the wooden supports were dangling and could fall.

Of course I volunteered to get those photos, because emailing them to the district office would allow me to put my two cents in on why we should keep the vertical pole so the ospreys could eventually use it again.

The power company, Central Florida Electric Cooperative, was right about the safety issue as you can see from the photo above. The nest, inactive at this time of year, is just on the other side of this view of the pole.


I walked out across the field, shot 4 different views of the osprey pole and then returned to my classroom. I attached the photos to an email, made a case for replacing the pole top with a nest platform citing the longevity of the nest site and how it was a part of our school.
The last thing I did before clicking "SEND" was to blind copy my new school principal who was away that day at training.

CLICK ... and the email shot out into the ether.

Later that day, I got a "thank you for the photos" from the district office and nothing more.
No response to my suggestions.

Uh oh.

A little after that, I got a very positive response from my principal after she received her copy of the email.

I was out the next morning for a dental appointment and I did not see my principal until after lunch.

The osprey pole was in the back of my mind, bouncing around as I planned my second round of email osprey diplomacy.

And then my principal popped into my classroom and informed me that she had been working that morning to save the nesting pole and that she had been successful.

We would either get the old pole with the dangerous dangly stuff cut off, or a brand new pole.

"YES!"
I high-fived her ... couldn't help myself.




The "new pole" angle was due to a certain school district employee with strong Cedar Key ties who was really pushing for a brand new pole that would last a long time, rather than the old weathered one that had been in the ground for decades.

Late last week this was the scene as "Operation Osprey" got underway. In the photo above, the old pole has been topped and is yet to be extracted.
The brand new pole is on the trailer waiting to be installed.

In this photo, the Central Florida Electric truck is shaking the old pole to loosen it in a technique familiar to anyone who has ever pulled an old fence post out of the ground.
Shake, pull, shake, pull ...

I worked late that day, but left out of the front entrance to the school so I didn't see their handy-work until I went in Sunday to do a little pro-bono planning before the kids start Monday.

When I walked around back, this is what I found.

The pole was up AND the Central Florida Electric folks had installed cross bars and a makeshift platform ... with some nesting material as bait.

WOO HOO!

Here's a view of the entire new pole. Just behind the thin band of trees is the salt marsh.

Awesome job CFEC!

This month I'm paying my electric bill with a smile.

If I were a hash tagging kind of guy, you might see things like:
#awesomenewprincipal
#waytogocentralfloridaelectriccooperative
#thanksdistrictguy
#letshearitforinteragencyinterspeciescooperation

It was a good week at Cedar Key School, folks, a very good week.