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WATCH: Bird of prey pole in Idlewild now home to osprey family

Photos courtesy of Cassidy Shankowsky with Cranbrook Photo

Photos courtesy of Cassidy Shankowsky with Cranbrook Photo

The Columbia Outdoor School has partnered with the City of Cranbrook to help with the development of Idlewild Park as part of their Joseph Creek restoration project that the school is also collaborating with the city on.

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So far the City has been overseeing the infrastructure components of the project — new buildings and paving of the trails, while the School has been responsible for the more ecological and biological aspects of the restoration. This includes replanting riparian around the lake, and lake edge, which they did with school students last fall, they’ve installed bat houses, done work with the western painted turtled and in the near future they will be doing work in the lake itself by installing fish habitat structures.

“For us it’s a way of revitalizing the wetland area here and bringing some of the ecological value back to the park and then further downstream, those ecological values will hopefully carry on and we’ll have some future work there as well,” said Todd Hebert, executive director with the Columbia Outdoor School.

Another piece they’ve done in the park is the installation of a bird of prey tower, provided by BC Hydro. Bill Dove, who ran a raptor — a bird of prey — rehab centre for around 35 years, said that the East Kootenay and West Kootenay as well has an amazing number of osprey in comparison to other parts of the world, adding that they are a great indicator species for the quality of the ecosystem they live in.

“These birds here came to this situation very quickly after the pole was put up by the park in combination with the Columbia Outdoor School and the restoration program here, so it gives us an indication again that there are what we’ll call birds searching for opportunities to nest, which again tells us the numbers we’ve got here and the quality of the ecosystem.”

Dove noticed soon after his first visit that there was a very good chance that the adult osprey’s nest had eggs in it, and sure enough they have now hatched and are approximately four weeks old; starting to flap their wings and get ready for their first flight.

Improving the quality of the park’s wetland is extremely important, said Hebert as that will help with the bird of prey, but also with the other waterfowl, the songbird species in the area and certainly the western painted turtle.

“This is one of their main nesting sites which is a species a risk, and so our hope is that we’ll see an increase in painted turtles in the area as well,” Hebert explained. “It’s an ongoing project for the restoration of the entire creek and hopefully bring that creek back into a healthy functioning system again.”

And not only are the osprey a great indicator species, Dove said that the birds can be taken for granted, because they are so prominent here, but that they are a truly fascinating species.

“They’re really a really interesting raptor, they’re quite different from many other raptors,” Dove said. “Even though they’re almost exclusively fish eaters, they are so different from bald eagles, which is also predominately a fish eater. They’re just really worth studying. “

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