From an early age, my wife Heather has been the Bird Lady.

If it has a beak, wings, and an energetic song (or in some cases, a piercing screech), Heather will let it fly into her heart and take up residence. Our family knows this and has frequently routed birds in need to our home, transforming Chez Rochat at times into an unofficial aviary. At one point, our flock numbered seven: three parakeets, two zebra finches, a society finch, and a fierce cockatiel with attitude named Chompy.

No, no partridges in pear trees. Not yet, anyway.

Even wild birds can get her heart going. The cardinals we saw while living in Kansas excited wonder. Crows and blue herons spur her curiosity, and the song of the chickadees is an old friend, whether it’s their usual excited “Chick-a-DEE-dee-dee!” or their rusty two-tone mating call.

So when we teamed up with Seagate to help provide a home for ospreys, I knew exactly whom I was going to tell first.

We’re no strangers to working with wildlife. I’ve written here before about our animal protection measures meant to guard the neighboring critters and our electric lines from each other, like the widened crossarms and perch guards that we install on power poles to protect local raptors, or the plastic collars that we place midway up the pole to keep opportunistic squirrels from having an easy climb.

Seagate, as it turns out, has a soft spot for wonderful birds itself. Over the winter, a previous nest had had to be removed from a neighboring property when that land was displaced for housing, not far from Seagate’s product design center in southwest Longmont. The company wanted to give the birds a new home when they returned in the spring, so senior Seagate engineer Dan Sokolov built a new nesting platform, which LPC then safely mounted in March on a repurposed utility pole towering 30 feet above the ground.

“I wasn’t sure how it would be received,” Sokolov acknowledged in a Seagate press release. “This was not your average request.”

But it was an exciting one, receiving unanimous approval from the management. And on April 1 – no fooling! – the osprey couple returned and made the new platform its home.

That sent everyone’s heart soaring.

It’s moments like that that make us proud to be a community utility. Where we not only provide power but get to be a good neighbor as well. To Seagate. To the ospreys. And to anyone passing by who might take joy in their new nest.

That’s a feather in everyone’s cap.

Just ask the Bird Lady.