UP FRONT/COMMENTARY: Our fingers are crossed for the Cherrylane Bridge ospreys

The Cherrylane Bridge ospreys are nesting ... we hope.

We’re not certain yet. And for the longest time that’s what the osprey pair seemed to be, too. Not certain.

But now she appears to be sitting on eggs. And the male comes and goes with fish to share, sitting proudly on the spiffy wooden perch above the nest, on a platform built especially for them by the construction company when the old one-lane steel bridge across the Clearwater River at Cherrylane was replaced last year with a wide new span.

This pair of ospreys had a nest on top of the steel superstructure of the old bridge for as long as anyone remembers. The neighborhood, as well as the commuters who crossed the old bridge daily to and from U.S. Highway 12, watched for the ospreys to return each spring.

They’d fluff up the nest with a few new twigs, and perhaps a red or blue bit of baling twine. Then we’d watch the progress of the chicks through the summer, from the first counting of fluffy heads sticking up, to fledglings teetering on the edge of the nest, exercising their wings.

But there was uncertainty this spring over whether the osprey pair would accept the new platform site, deemed by some local critics as too close to the railroad tracks and road, and not tall enough.

The ospreys had, in fact, rejected the site last spring. Their nest was carefully moved with a crane from the old bridge to the platform over the winter, in anticipation of the new bridge construction.

But instead, the pair made repeated efforts to rebuild on the old bridge, even as it was being dismantled for salvage. They actually managed somehow to lay two eggs in a hasty assemblage of a few sticks on the old bridge. But the eggs were promptly whisked to a raptor hatching facility in Coeur d’Alene. Only one was viable, it was reported, and that one did not make it to hatching.

That was the end of the Cherrylane osprey story last year. And this spring, at the time for the ospreys’ return, there was a big problem.

The platform nest was already occupied — by a Canada goose, smugly sitting on a clutch of eggs. Concerns the platform wasn’t high enough for ospreys seemed confirmed.

Over the next few weeks, we watched as the ospreys searched for a new nesting site. They tried several times to pioneer a nest on top of a pair of old grain bins east of the new bridge, sticking branches into a tangle of metal above the bins. After that they disappeared, who knows where. It was sad to think they really had abandoned Cherrylane.

Then suddenly one day the goslings up and left, bouncing down from the nest to follow Mom to the river. And within days, the osprey pair was spotted, checking out the empty nest.

Now excitement is running high among the neighbors, fingers crossed.

While the ospreys seem oblivious to traffic, we’ve seen the pair frightened off their nest, once by a man who let his dog out of his car near the nest, and just this weekend by a couple sitting on lawn chairs near the nest, fishing.

The ospreys eventually returned, but uncertainty nags.

With all the changes happening at Cherrylane, and all around us these days, perhaps one thing will stay the same.

The Cherrylane Bridge ospreys are nesting ... we hope.

Pettit is a retired city editor at the Tribune and lives on Cherrylane Road.