Dick Jennings works for The Trustees of Reservations on Chappaquiddick. He is their natural history guide there and he seasonally leads tours that introduce people to the extraordinary stretch of coastline that connects Wasque Point at the southeast corner of the Vineyard to the tidal gut that defines the end of the long peninsula arching around Cape Pogue Bay. He has been observing this habitat for years and he is clearly in touch with what goes on there in the natural realm.

One of the vehicle tracks that make up the “road” system on this sandy edge of Chappaquiddick runs through the low dunes that separate Poucha Pond from East Beach bordering Muskeget Channel, the body of water that funnels the sea between the Vineyard and the western outlying islands associated with Nantucket — Muskeget, Tuckernuck and various shoals. Dick always keeps an eye out for birds, especially ospreys, because, in addition to his duties for the Trustees, he is also the person who does much of the groundwork on the Vineyard for the ospreys’ principal champion in the research field, Rob Bierregaard. Rob is the guy who fixes lightweight radio transmitters on specific ospreys to track their migratory paths through the Caribbean and on to South America and then back again.

In 2009 Dick Jennings had noticed that one pair of ospreys was behaving oddly, spending much more time than one would expect right on the sand, standing or crouching on a slight rise in the dunes. He kept an eye out for similar activity in 2010 at this same spot and soon had reason to be suspicious that the mated pair of ospreys he was again observing might actually be nesting on the sand. Initially no nest was evident, but on May 21 last spring Dick, along with Sue Geresy, discovered that the female osprey was in fact incubating three eggs right on the sand at ground level.

Well, ospreys don’t do this. They usually build the sort of large bulky nests we are used to seeing, up high in a tree, on a power line pole or on a day marker in a waterway; and almost without exception the nest site commands an overview of the surrounding countryside. On Martha’s Vineyard most of the nests sit atop manmade poles which support a strong platform built with the simplicity and braced sturdiness of a picnic table.

The ongoing program to provide Vineyard ospreys with a suitable and predator-protected nesting platform has been active since the beginning of the 1970s. Gus Ben David, starting when he was director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Trust, has always been, and remains, at the core of an evolving team of osprey advocates who embrace the opportunity to build, literally, for the growth of the fish hawk population on the Vineyard. According to Mr. Ben David, there were two nesting pairs on the Island when the first pole went up and this year’s tally, 40 years later, was 72 nesting pairs. One could not ask for a more successful program to help this iconic raptor recover from the debilitating days of widespread DDT use.

Gus Ben David has maintained a longstanding and reciprocal relationship with the succession of power companies serving the Vineyard. Now it is NSTAR. They have a problem with ospreys building a nest on one of their poles among the power lines and Gus and his team offer either a deterrent to nesting there or the erection of an alternative nesting pole nearby.

There appears to be no previous history of an osprey pair choosing to nest on the ground on the Vineyard. Why would they? We have skunks and cats and raccoons and dogs and people and four-by-fours that collectively make this approach to raising young emphatically the wrong one. There was an osprey nest once on Gardiner’s Island, out in Long Island Sound, built on a lobster pot sitting on the ground; and Island naturalist Soo Whiting reports having seen an osprey nest on the ground in the Bahamas. In both of those cases there were no ground predators present to threaten the eggs and young. Here the predators abound.

The three eggs in the nest on the sand near Poucha Pond last May were lost, as would be expected. The naturalists that knew about the failed nest and that were closely connected to efforts to encourage ospreys decided to help out by placing a nesting alternative nearby in the hopes of attracting the same determined but misguided pair, so a plan emerged to install a new nest platform, on a short post instead of the tall telephone poles that are typical. The new one along the east side of Poucha Pond would be tall enough to foil predators, about seven feet above the marsh grass, and low enough to not intrude on the vista from an aesthetic point of view.

On the clear and frigid morning of Dec. 10, a cadre of osprey fans gathered at TTOR’s facility at Mytoi near the Dike Bridge; the veteran pole raising crew consisted of Gus Ben David with Ivo and Piret Meisner, three Trustees employees — Paul Schulz, Jessica Seevers and Dick Jennings — this writer, nature author Soo Whiting and videographer Anne Lemenager, who was there to add footage to her ongoing series with Gus Ben David for MVTV. It was the coldest morning of the season and absolutely stunning for the clarity of light over the broad landscape of beach, marsh and thin ice over parts of the pond. A convoy made its way to the site on soft tires. Mr. Ben David’s pickup carried the rugged nesting platform bolted to a pressure-treated post. Everyone with boots helped ferry equipment out into the tidal marsh. A hole had to be dug with very long-handled shovels. Then a cylindrical galvanized sleeve was tamped down into the muck as the hole was advanced with the shovels, until the sleeve was deep enough. The nest pole assembly (the shortest ever and number 127 for the Vineyard program) was then tilted up by all who could get a hand on it until it slipped to upright. Centered and plumbed, it was then secured by stone gravel lugged in buckets to the site to be poured around the vertical post inside the retaining sleeve. The practiced crew was smoothly efficient; and shortly there was a new osprey pole of modest height in place to await the return of the fish hawks in early springtime. A little time in the sun and some more weathering by wind, rain and salt spray, and the nest platform will blend into this pristine scene and look as if it was always meant to be.

Gazette contributor Lanny McDowell lives in West Tisbury. His Web site is lannymcdowellavianart.com.