Breezy Birdies Become Hawkeyes

Minnesota Power has "Adopted" a dozen osprey chicks from the Brainerd Lakes Area for relocation in Iowa.  The raptor chicks came from nests atop transmission structures north of Deerwood.

After a long day of climbing poles and banding birds, 12 osprey chicks were trucked southward, where they were taken to their new habitat on waterways in northwest and west-central Iowa.  For more than a decade, MP has been helping Iowa Department of Natural Resources officials
import wild ospreys, fish-eating raptors that thrive in northern and central Minnesota but were driven out of Iowa decades ago by the use of chemical pesticides.

The plan is that the Minnesota-born osprey chicks “imprint” on their new surroundings and return each spring to nest in Iowa.

A field team consisting of six Iowans, an avian biologist and bird conservationist with the Minnesota Audubon Society and linemen and environmental specialists from Minnesota Power worked a remote area of lakes and forests north of Brainerd, Minn. to obtain the chicks. Bill Fraundorf, an environmental compliance specialist with Minnesota Power, had scouted by land and by helicopter osprey nests in the preceding week.

The young birds came from transmission lines near Breezy Point and Riverton.

Federal and state permits granting MP and Iowa permission to remove the chicks, require that at least one chick must be left in each nest.