(22 Aug 2025)
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Apple Valley, Minnesota – 20 August 2025
1. Osprey nest on stadium lights
2. Osprey perched on lights
3. Osprey flying overhead
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Cory Hanson, Apple Valley High School Athletic Director:
“Well, when you see these large birds flying across your field with these humongous sticks, you start to ask questions like what is going on here? And you take one look at that nest, right? And you’re like, okay, this is not your average bird. So then we just started asking questions and one thing led to another and the DNR came out here and was like, yep, it’s an osprey nest.”
5. Various osprey nest on stadium lights
ASSOCIATED PRESS
St. Paul, Minnesota – 22 August 2025
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Heidi Cyr, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources nongame wildlife permit coordinator:
“The problem is that the lights would both cook the birds on there because they get hot but it’s also that it’s a fire hazard which then becomes an electrical hazard if there’s a fire on those light poles.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Apple Valley, Minnesota – 20 August 2025
7. Various high school athletic field
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Cory Hanson, Apple Valley High School Athletic Director:
“So with that, you start to think, okay, Friday night football, soccer in the stadium in the evening, we got to start scheduling things and starting looking at what our options are.”
9. Osprey nest on stadium lights
10. Osprey perched on flag pole
ASSOCIATED PRESS
St. Paul, Minnesota – 22 August 2025
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Heidi Cyr, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources nongame wildlife permit coordinator:
“Luckily for Apple Valley they should be able to remove the nest within probably a week because the birds are it have already taken some of their first flights.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Apple Valley, Minnesota – 20 August 2025
12. Osprey flying overhead
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Cory Hanson, Apple Valley High School Athletic Director:
“We’re the Eagles. Yeah, I know, it could be a little bit more poetic if it was an eagle nest up there for sure.”
14. Osprey on lights with nest
STORYLINE:
The opening of the fall sports season at a Minnesota high school has been disrupted by a pair of ospreys who thought a light pole on the football field would be a perfect place to build a huge nest and raise their chicks.
As migratory birds, the raptors are protected under state and federal law. So officials at Apple Valley High School had to rearrange their football and soccer schedules, switching to day games instead of nights. Turning on the hot floodlights would have risked cooking the birds and starting a fire.
The school’s teams, which just happen to be named the Eagles, have been working on a fix with the state Department of Natural Resources. The school has been sending up a drone twice a week to monitor the chicks so that once the young ospreys are old enough and fly off, crews can remove the nest and switch on the traditional Friday Night Lights.
“Luckily for Apple Valley, they should be able to remove the nest within probably a week because the birds have already taken some of their first flights,” Heidi Cyr, the DNR’s nongame wildlife permit coordinator, said in an interview Friday.
Cory Hanson, the athletic director at the school in the Minneapolis suburbs, said he’s seen as many as four chicks in the drone photos. He said they became aware of the nest around June.
DNR officials confirmed it was an osprey nest, and told school officials that federal law made it clear that they could not disturb it for now.
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