Alex Nitkin Builds Welcome Mat for Ospreys

Ospreys that once faced extinction from exposure to pesticides are making such a comeback in Westport that Longshore Club Park and Staples High School senior Alex Nitkin are working together to provide a place for the birds as breeding season begins.

They installed Longshore's second osprey platform for the ospreys this week.

The project was part of 17-year-old Alex Nitkin's effort to earn Eagle Scout status. Thanks to him, the two osprey males spotted battling over the single existing platform can resolve their differences amicably.

The V-shaped platform was lifted in a cherry-picker bucket and bolted atop a telephone pole 45 feet above the ground. Mike Perez, whose labor was volunteered by Almstead Tree & Shrub Care Company, made a second trip in the bucket with sticks and branches which he arranged to simulate a nest to make the platform even more enticing to prospective occupants.

Brian Sepot, Longshore's assistant golf course superintendent and a former Eagle Scout himself, performed the last task: nailing a predator guard made of galvanized flashing around the pole (donated by Connecticut Light & Power) to deter squirrels and raccoons from running up the pole and harming osprey eggs.

It all happened not a minute too soon.

Overhead, two ospreys were observed soaring in circles in the vicinity. In late March, migrating osprey return from their southern wintering hideouts to breed. By April, as many as three eggs are laid. If all goes well, they will hatch within 30 days. At two months, they make their first flight.

The two Longshore platforms — the first installed in 2008 by Eagle Scout Chris Kosinski — are positioned several hundred yards apart near Grey's Creek, the tidal estuary that borders the golf course on its southern side.

Osprey, a type of hawk with an adult wingspan of 72 inches, feed almost entirely on fish. They can capture a fish weighing their body weight of 4 pounds and carry it aloft to their hungry families.

They like to nest atop dead trees but readily adapt to man-made platforms, creating nests, to which they frequently return annually, with seaweed, driftwood and, if available, trash.

Trash will not be an option this year.

As part of his community service and leadership requirement to become an Eagle Scout, Nitkin also enlisted five Scout friends (Steve Osseiran, Ed Hickson, Marshall Knutson, Patrick Lindwall and Aiden Clarke) to do a major cleanup of the surrounding area, which includes a gravel- based overflow parking lot. They filled several dumpsters with debris that could harm osprey young during more than 100 man-hours of work.

Longshore's environmental stewardship, as demonstrated by providing sanctuary for wildlife at the 18-hole municipal golf course, has won it accreditation as a "certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary." The designation was given in 2005 and requires re-certification every two years. Fittingly, Longshore's re-certification was announced on the very day the second osprey platform was installed.

In both 2008 and 2009, nesting ospreys incubated offspring successfully in their platform nest, said Dan Rackliffe, golf course superintendent.

Nitkin expressed gratitude to Rackliffe and Sepot for their guidance and assistance with the project, hopeful he will be able to report a successful nesting in time for his Eagle Scout honor in June.