Samantha Plencner holds an osprey chick at Busse Woods on June 12, 2024, in Rolling Meadows. Over the next couple of weeks, staff at the Forest Preserves of Cook County are banding, performing health checks, and recording data on more than a dozen osprey chicks scattered throughout forest preserve properties. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
By NARA SCHOENBERG | Chicago Tribune
Wildlife biologist Chuck Rizzo climbs into what looks like an enormous white bucket and slowly begins to rise.
The metal arm of an aerial lift truck propels him higher and higher, above thick underbrush and then even some treetops, toward a striking sight in an otherwise ordinary Cook County forest preserve: a sturdy, stick-strewn platform built on top of a 50-foot telephone pole.
Brannon Wittendberg guides the bucket lifting Melina Frezados up to an osprey nest in Busse Woods on June 12, 2024, in Rolling Meadows. Once at the nest, Frezados, a wildlife biologist specializing in wild bird research and conservation, will return two osprey chicks. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
“How is it?” the lift operator yells as he maneuvers the bucket carrying the wildlife biologist. “Want it over?”
“Yeah, get it closer,” Rizzo says.
Then he reaches toward the sticks and lifts out two pudgy osprey chicks with bulging chocolate-brown eyes and bellies covered in fluff.
The chicks, which will be examined by a vet and returned to their high-rise home, are a sign of success for a Forest Preserves of Cook County program that aims to increase the number of once-endangered ospreys in the Chicago area by constructing towering nesting platforms.
A mini-fan cools down an osprey chick following its examination at Baker’s Lake Younghusband Prairie on June 12, 2024, in Barrington. Over the next couple of weeks, staff at the Forest Preserves of Cook County are banding, performing health care checks, and recording data on more than a dozen osprey chicks scattered throughout forest preserve properties. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Samantha Plencner secures an osprey chick before it gets a check-up at Baker’s Lake Younghusband Prairie on June 12, 2024, in Barrington. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Alex Kaplan, left, sprays water into the beak of an osprey chick while Brannon Wittenberg holds it at Baker’s Lake Younghusband Prairie on June 12, 2024, in Barrington. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
The Forest Preserves program now bands up to 30 chicks a year, all raised by wild osprey — also known as sea hawks — that choose to build their massive nests on human-built platforms standing 50 to 80 feet above the ground.
That’s up from a handful of chicks in the first year of banding in the 1990s, according to Forest Preserves wildlife biologist Chris Anchor, who started the osprey nesting program after spotting nesting platforms in northern Wisconsin.
“What we’ve done is we’ve greatly increased the speed at which ospreys have populated Cook County,” Anchor said.
Melina Frezados adjusts the band on an osprey chick’s leg at Baker’s Lake Younghusband Prairie on June 12, 2024, in Barrington. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Studies of similar programs have found that the platforms attract ospreys and produce successful nests, and the platforms are widely used in many areas of the United States.
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