The reality show Straight out of Exshaw is returning for another season – and this year, the locale has switched up for its main players.
The reality show Straight out of Exshaw is returning for another season – and this year, the locale has switched up for its main players.
Meet the osprey, two hawk-like fishing birds with brown and white feathers, which returned to set on April 16 to be filmed around the clock at their nest over the next few months.
Along with a switch-a-roo on the nesting location, this season of the osprey will feature some brand new feathery faces in the cast after they hatch in the nest that is being streamed live on YouTube at “Fortis Alberta Osprey Camera – Exshaw.”
There is both a nesting platform and butchering pole for the birds of prey, but the location is now about 100 metres northwest of the previous location along Highway 1A at First Lake (Exshaw pond).
After the birds flew south last year, the poles were moved while installation work was being completed on new transmission lines from AltaLink and FortisAlberta. New power lines were installed to improve the electrical grid to accommodate the Lafarge cement plant's new expansion.
In 2015, AltaLink was hired to carry out the duties for Lafarge and conducted environmental studies, engaged environmental specialists and considered the re-routing work to be “low impact” on wildlife and vegetation.
The main characters, though, either didn't seem to notice or couldn't be bothered by the switch.
“The (osprey) pair, upon return, took to it immediately,” wrote MD of Bighorn Reeve Dene Cooper, in an email.
Construction of the nest on top of the four-by-four foot, man-made platform is well under way. Relocating the nesting platform, which stands 50-55 feet tall and the butchering pole, a few feet taller, was up to Fortis.
“When we looked at moving the nesting platform, we tried to figure out what the best place would be,” said Rod Doornbosch, IT Architecture Operational Manager at FortisAlberta.
Fortis has 36 osprey nesting poles throughout its service zone and Doornbosch wasn't concerned the birds wouldn't take to the new location due to it being the exact same nesting platform used as before.
Cliff Hansen has been following the Exshaw osprey since the 1990s and said the birds will “always return to the area to where their nest was” in the previous year.
“That last pole has been moved several times already,” said the longtime Exshaw resident and member of Bighorn Corridor Environment Committee.
“It was on the opposite side of the road in the mid-to-late-'90s … one year it was moved it out to Lac Des Arcs, but they didn't like that and didn't use it. They put the nesting pole back in Exshaw and the osprey came back immediately.”
Hansen said the birds return each year around April 15, give or take a few days.
“Once they return, the male builds a nest and/or does repairs. In this case, though, he'll build it,” said Hansen.
In an act of what could be considered reality television gold, the osprey pair were observed “in active courtship” last week and are expected to produce two to four eggs sometime in May.
“In about two weeks, the female will lay eggs, and the male will be busy feeding her because she won't leave the nest.”
Typically, once osprey offspring hatch in June, they will feed and grow before learning to fly in August.
In late September to mid October, the birds will head south for the winter months on the coast of California or Gulf of Mexico before returning for a new season, next spring.
