OWLS HEAD, Maine — An Owls Head woman has come to the defense of a pair of ospreys who have built a nest atop a beacon tower at the Knox County Regional Airport.
The airport manager said he is trying to force the birds off the airport grounds for the safety of incoming and outgoing planes.
Airport Manager Jeffrey Northgraves said the airport has a permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to harass the birds so they will leave. The permit also allows the airport to kill the birds if necessary, but he stressed he does not want to use that option.
The tower, between 50 to 60 feet tall, was erected during World War II by the Navy. A rotating green-and-white beacon was installed at the top to signal pilots that this was an airport.
The beacon malfunctioned during the past winter, however, and about two weeks ago, the nest was discovered, Northgraves said. When the beacon was working, the bright rotating light kept birds from nesting there, he said.
The tower is near the approach path for aircraft, and his concern is that the birds could collide with planes.
He said there have been collisions between birds and aircraft at the airport in earlier years, mainly involving seagulls, a few turkeys and turkey buzzards. But since the airport installed a fence around the airport property, which eliminated the turkey problem, there have been no incidents reported.
Anne Edmands said she became aware of the airport’s effort to rid the tower of the birds last week, when she heard gunshots outside her home, which is located on Ash Point Drive across from the tower. She said she eventually learned that it was people working for the airport firing at the birds.
Northgraves said the guns were similar to small flare guns that fire something called shellcrackers, similar to fireworks, which explode once they get about 50 feet in the air. So far, the efforts have not succeeded.
Edmands said she sees no harm in letting the ospreys remain, hatch their eggs and then move on. She said the ospreys regularly fly from the nest to the closest shore, which is in the opposite direction of the airport and the incoming and outgoing planes.
The airport used a drone to inspect the nest and no eggs were detected, Northgraves said. If eggs had been found, the airport would have had to apply for a separate permit from the U.S. Department Agriculture, which would slow the effort to clear out the birds. Then the airport would have to work to safely relocate the nest.
The current permit allows the airport to kill birds, but Northgraves said he prefers not to kill any animal. In 2012, the airport considered options to get rid of wild turkeys, including having a hunt. Instead, the fence was constructed.
He said a cherry picker may be used to remove the nest or the water stream from a fire hose could be employed to destroy the nest if there are no eggs in it.
Northgraves said the beacon light came back Thursday but does not rotate. That may temporarily have scared off the birds. He said it may not work long, however. He said the birds would not leave after any eggs were laid and hatched. He said they would stick around for months as the hatchlings grew.
“The airport would then become the branded home for a new generation of osprey — if we can’t get rid of the birds (and possibly the nest) before there are eggs,” Northgraves said.
The tower, which is the temporary home of the ospreys, is in very poor condition, the airport manager said. Electricians have refused to climb up it to try to repair the malfunctioning beacon.
The airport has received a grant to build a new tower, Northgraves said. The cost of the new tower with a beacon atop will be $45,000.
The cost of removing the World War II era tower is about $26,000.
But before that tower can be removed, the airport would need the approval of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. He said he expects a decision soon from the commission.
The commission will not prevent the tower from being removed but seeks the property owner to document the historic structures, said Kirk Mohney, director of the commission. Knox County did that last year when it was replacing a maintenance building, he said.
The Navy constructed the airport in 1942 with the assistance of the Work Projects Administration, a federal work program for the unemployed. The airport was one of five Naval auxiliary facilities that supported the Brunswick Naval Air Station, Mohney said. The others were in Sanford, Lewiston, Bar Harbor and Long Island in Casco Bay. The Navy later decommissioned it and turned it over to the city of Rockland, which in December 1968 turned it over to Knox County.