Huckleberries: Baby ospreys lead camera back to owner

You don’t see osprey nests every day. Or high-end digital cameras, dinged up along the side of a busy highway. But traveling developers Tom Rhinevault and Cindy Slane saw both on the Fourth of July. Northwesterners Tom and Cindy travel around the country in an RV, giving seminars on subdivision development and finance, as well as offering hands-on expertise to developers. They’re staying at the Blackwell Island RV park while developing the Park Rose subdivision in the Rathdrum area. On July 4, Tom and Cindy spotted an osprey nest with babies while boating along the Spokane River. Shortly afterward, they saw another one – on the camera they spotted along U.S. Highway 95 near Blackwell Island. Tom and Cindy were surprised that the camera had shots of osprey young when they flipped it on in search of clues about the identity of the owner. In one shot, a woman held on the palm of her hand two orphaned osprey rescued from a nest on Sandpoint’s Long Bridge and transplanted to Benewah County. She was Jane Cantwell of the Raptor Center. The camera belonged to her colleague, Dr. Wayne Melquist. Seems it had fallen off the boat they were pulling back from a Coeur d’Alene osprey tour. The photos were invaluable, documenting the successful relocation of the two baby osprey, which are doing well and about to take their first solo flights. Cantwell was walking on air after Tom and Cindy contacted her with the help of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. She and the camera will be reunited at 2 p.m. today at Blackwell Island.

“ If you’d read Huckleberries Online Thursday, you’d be first among your friends to know that octogenarian state Rep. Frank Henderson of Post Falls and Betty Nelson of Coldwell Banker are altar bound as early as December, after a brief courtship.