The bald eagle pair at Standley Lake Regional Park and Wildlife Refuge has a new potential home, but it will ultimately be their decision to pack up and move to the newly installed nesting platform.
Standing over 40 feet tall with excellent views of the western side of the park, the nesting platform provides a stable place for the eagles to build a nest that is more resilient to the high winds that have caused their nest to fail repeatedly over the past few years.
“For their nests, eagles choose areas where they have great viewsheds,” said Joe Reale, open space superintendent with Westminster’s Parks, Recreation, and Libraries department. “Cottonwoods are great for that, but dead cottonwoods don’t hold up that well. It is a completely natural phenomenon. What we’re doing here is giving them the best opportunity to be successful.”
The 5’ x 5’ platform itself was custom built using pressure treated decking and based on the design of osprey platforms that have been successfully used in other parks around the country. The platform is mounted to a telephone pole using a custom-made bracketing system and is engineered to last for decades.
Before being lifted by a crane and secured to its current location, the platform was seeded with nesting material including twigs and branches from previous nests that had likely fallen due to high winds.
The large pole itself was donated and installed by Sturgeon Electric, a company that routinely works with the City for traffic signal maintenance.
The new nesting platform was constructed in the western side of the park, and is viewable from the Eagle Blind near the park’s Nature Center. The platform was installed near a previous nesting location for the bald eagle pair.
“The idea is to provide them with a long-term stable site. We’re going back here because this is a location that was successful for many years,” Reale said. “That said, we can’t just make them move in. We’re building the Taj Mahal here, but they could still choose to live down on Baltic Avenue.”
Other man-made nesting structures have been successful in attracting bald eagles, including at Barr Lake State Park, where several large wire baskets were secured in cottonwood trees.
There has been a nesting bald eagle pair at Standley Lake Regional Park and Wildlife Refuge since 1993, and City staff is hopeful that the current bald eagle nesting pair will make their home on the newly installed platform and be successful for many years to come.
“They are iconic,” Reale said. “We’ve had bald eagles here at Standley Lake for a very long time. We want them here, and we want to give them the best opportunity to succeed.”