The Albany railroad bridge, built in 1921, where a story of bird rivalry is playing out this spring.
If you were worried about the ospreys whose nest on the Albany railroad bridge was taken over by Canada geese, you can rest easy. The ospreys have given up and moved next door.
For years there’s been a big nest on top of what I assume was one of the telegraph poles back in the day when the bridge was built a century ago.
Ospreys built the nest, but now and then it gets taken over by geese. This spring the same thing happened, and for a while the osprey pair tried to scare the geese away. A story about this conflict among birds appeared here on April 11.
But as I noticed in the following days on my frequent bike rides on the Dave Clark Riverfront Path, the ospreys displaced from their customary lair were not left homeless for long.
Theirs was not the only potential perch on the bridge suitable for making a nest. There’s another former telegraph or power pole. It’s on top of the bridge’s center pivot, and that’s where the ospreys went to work.
In a few days they had something that, while not as big and sturdy as their original home, looked like a passable nest.
From the standpoint of onlookers on the path, the downside of the new nest is that it’s farther from the bank. Cell phones equipped with digital zoom can produce an image of it, but as you can see below, it’s even blurrier than the picture of the goose that stretched its neck closer to shore. (hh)
An osprey rests near its new nest near the center of the railroad bridge on April 13.
Not worried about the former occupants it displaced, a goose looks around to see what’s up.
Is this considered middle housing or single-unit detached housing?
I have no problem with this new nest as long as the proper permit was paid for and all work open for approval by the city.
The birds need to know who’s in charge here.
It’s low end housing, nothing like the mansion the ospreys worked so hard to perfect then got evicted.
This exact same thing happened last year, and neither the geese nor the osprey ended up with chicks. Sad to see it repeated. Hope they all have better luck this year.
Great pictures, Hasso. Thanks.