This item was written by Fran Golden, a cruise expert and Trip Coach for Budget Travel magazine. Golden is serving as Guest Editor of The Cruise Log while USA TODAY Cruise Editor Gene Sloan is away.
Officials in Portland, Maine, have been touting the city’s new “mega-berth” cruise facility, but apparently a pair of ospreys didn’t get the memo. The birds are building a nest that could impact cruise calls.
Port officials are debating whether to encourage the ospreys to build elsewhere.
“Right now there’s no eggs there, so I’m pretty sure it’s OK if we move the nest,” port manager Robert Leeman tells USA TODAY.
He says he has contacted state wildlife officials to see how to legally facilitate moving the nest.
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First spotted last Thursday, the nest is at the end of one pier on top of a capstan that’s used for mooring lines to a nearby bollard (short post), Leeman says.
No ships are currently scheduled to call at the berth until Sept. 8, but after that there are cruise ships visiting nearly every day for the fall season.
“If there are eggs and there’s still a baby (osprey) in there at that time, we wouldn’t be able to use the bollard,” Leeman says.
So far, he says, he has only seen one osprey flying around the nest. The birds also nest in nearby areas including on tree branches and utility poles.
Scott Lindsay, a biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, tells the Portland Press Herald that an option is letting the ospreys finish their nesting at the pier in the hope that any chicks are mature enough to fly away by the middle of summer.
Federal law protects bird nests once there are eggs or chicks present, Lindsay notes.
Still, he says allowing the nest to stay on the capstan might require some additional steps to assure the ospreys aren’t disturbed.
“It’s not a good site,” he tells the newspaper.
Although ospreys are abundant in Maine, nesting pairs have declined in some coastal regions, according to a 2011 state wildlife report.