Nest is up to ospreys

BACK BAY — A day after watching workers uproot his home, Spike was settling back in Friday and feathering his nest. He’s one of a pair of ospreys who recently settled on Shellmaker Island, nesting on a platform atop a 30-foot pole.

The pole was moved Thursday to a more secluded spot on the island, which will be safer for the birds.

Construction workers building the Back Bay Science Center, an educational and research facility, gave Spike his name for a tuft on the back of his head. It took him less than 36 hours to adjust. By Friday morning he and his mate were flying in with sticks to add to the nest, said Jeff Stoddard, wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Fish and Game.

The ospreys have been showing signs that they’ll mate this spring, though Stoddard said some observers think one of the birds is a juvenile that would be too young to produce offspring.

Last year, a pair used the nest to have babies, halting construction of the Back Bay Science Center. The birds are federally protected, and these were the first ospreys known to have successfully hatched chicks in the area in many years.

Once the babies were out of the nest, construction resumed, but Fish and Game officials decided to move the pole holding the nesting platform farther from the new building and its parking lot. Ospreys tend to get attached to one spot, Stoddard said, so it’s likely at least one of the birds now at the nest was there last year.

The nest itself got spruced up during the move. Stoddard said he removed a 50-gallon trash bag and pieces of inner tube and fishing line from the nest materials.

“They put it in there just because they’re urban birds in an urban environment,” he said, but those materials could pose a choking risk to baby ospreys.

Stoddard isn’t the only one worried about the birds’ welfare. In fact, the osprey pair seems to have developed a fan base. Workers from Southern California Edison who helped move the pole wanted to come back and see the birds later.

“All the guys on the crew that were doing the lifting were asking if they could bring their kids out,” Stoddard said.

Concern for the ospreys also came from an unlikely quarter. Construction workers building the science center were angry last spring when the birds’ historic nesting put a stop to their work, but now they’re far from annoyed.

“When they found out we were moving it [the pole] they were like, ‘Are they going to be OK?’ ” Stoddard said.