Another shipment of brand new osprey platforms is making its way out to locations along the Westport and Little Compton shore in time for the migrants’ return this month.

Among the volunteers helping with the project are local youngsters who helped screw and nail pre-cut platform pieces in place at last year’s Westport River Watershed Alliance River Day. The children also placed twigs and branches atop the platforms, just as the osprey do when they build their nests.

The project was in response to the toll that the previous winter storms had taken on the many platforms in the Westport River, as reported by the staff at Mass Audubon’s Allens Pond Sanctuary. The platforms were designed by Westport residents Dick Manchester and Charley Appleton, and constructed by them with help from volunteers. Some of the children who helped signed their names to the wooden structures.

Subsequently, the Borden family of Westport purchased one of the finished platforms at the WRWA’s annual Summer Gala, and then asked where the unit could be put for the birds to make a new home.

WRWA contacted the Westport Land Conservation Trust which knew just the right place. They installed the platform at their newly conserved wildlife sanctuary near Richmond Pond. That platform was put in place just recently.

The other four platforms built on River Day went to Cockeast Pond, two to Audubon, and one to Quicksand Pond in Little Compton.