Craighill Keeper’s bLog

Just like when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s crypt to much fanfare, I eagerly anticipated opening the privy (outhouse) on the Craighill light. It had been sealed shut for more years than I’m aware. Of course, unlike Rivera, I expected to find nothing inside, only hoping for a stable floor. I was delighted to find the full bench seat still intact after Hobie and Tony, volunteers with the Chesapeake Chapter of the US Lighthouse Society, pried the boarded up doorway open. I held my breath and waited as the last nail came out and the ‘door’ was wiggled out. “There’s a skeleton in there!” they joked! Nope, nothing - just a bunch of paint dust. With a couple upward whacks of the hammer, the seat even lifted up, revealing the drop to the water below. Too cool!

Memorial Day weekend got kicked off with a great volunteer effort provided by the Chesapeake Chapter of the US Lighthouse Society. We accomplished a ton in 7 hours time. I’ve nominated the lighthouse for a donation of windows and doors through JELD-WEN’s lighthouse program and as part of a follow-up questionnaire, needed to provide detailed measurements of all the windows and the door. Hobie and Tony set to work doing that before the task of opening the privy. Meanwhile, other volunteers set to work scrubbing and scraping in prep for painting the keeper’s quarters with the paint my husband and I hauled up the day before after moving the ladder that had been hanging under the inaccessible hatch (shown in the dead osprey picture in the previous post) to the platform in order to provide a stable boarding system.

The guys managed to wiggle and work the hatch until it was able to close. One of the hinges rusted through the strap and will need to be re-welded or replaced, but it’s functional and I was able to install a lock clasp finally with some help cutting a notch for the hinge to fit through the gap. Security - check! I also secured the ladder to the platform and reorganized cables which will be useful for pulling boats along the outer diameter of the lighthouse - at least on one side. Next time, I’ll add loops to the cable to make clicking the boat in quickly easier.

Al, Jeff, Sherry, Anne, and Donna painted the keeper’s quarters and part of the railing and she looks beautiful with her new facelift! Cathy (not me - Captain Howard’s wife) scrubbed and cleaned out the extremely full gutter trap. An amazing effort by all that accomplished a ton in one day! Huge thanks to Captain Howard and his boat, Audacious, for safely transporting the volunteers and getting them on and off the lighthouse. Nobody fell in!

Of course, I left with a list of things still needing to be done and things to buy to keep out there (like face masks). The day was perfect except for the ants, which are as bad as ever. I was attacked just prior to disembarking after I slung my son’s backpack around my shoulder forgetting he had left a banana in the front pocket. I wondered what was poking out of the backpack all over and pricking my arm. I looked down to find my arm covered in those tiny ants! Pest control… absolutely necessary next time!

Thanks crew for a job well done! I’m impressed some of them came all the way from Pennsylvania and New Jersey for the day of exhausting manual labor, but hopefully found it well worth it. Everyone was impressed that the lighthouse had a basement.

[Full Photoset]

For as long as I’ve been visiting the lighthouse (six years now), a family of osprey have lived on a platform at the base of the lantern dome. I’ve never messed with them and they’ve never messed with me aside from perching on the ledge of the keeper’s roof and staring at me one night while I babysat the boat. We were both annoyed by the other’s existence on the lighthouse (they’re messy and I’m intruding), but learned to just ignore each other. Well, and I was left to clean up their messes of sticks and fish bones and heads and of course, the ever-present poop.

I tried to get out to the lighthouse two weeks ago, but the water was too rough to attempt to tie up and board. As an aside, when oh when will summer really begin and the weather cooperate?! As I circled the light with two friends, a completely unexpected and horrifying sight caught our eye. A giant osprey was caught mid-railing facing out just to the left of the winch between the double davits and obviously dead in a spread-eagle pose. How in the world did that happen?! He had to have dove straight down and out to get caught like that, but knows the lighthouse since it was his (or her) home, so something else must have been at play. The high winds we’ve had? I have no idea. I wasn’t able to get up and do something about it at the time, so I hoped mother nature would lend a helping hand and somehow pry it out before the next trip out.

No such luck as we went out Friday with a plan for access prior to the volunteer day with the Chesapeake Chapter of the US Lighthouse Society. The bird was still there, still stuck, but had slipped to the base of the railing and was dangling over the edge.

I had been wondering since ospreys mate for life what the mate would do? Would it stay? Would it go? What about the babies that were sure to be born soon? My questions were answered yesterday during the volunteer day. I made my way to the lantern gallery to find a mess of sticks all over the deck. The platform the nest had been on was completely clean. Weird? Did the mate have a fit and knock its own nest down, eggs and all (I found two broken in the mess of sticks). Was some other sinister force in play that killed both of them? I contemplated the mystery and those questions while bagging all the sticks for removal.

I can’t imagine the storms were responsible for this tragedy? I mourn for the birds, but am going to rush out and get a Bird-X Peller Pro and stick some spikes on the platform. The original inhabitants have moved out and now it’s time to claim the structure for humans — while hopefully keeping it a lot cleaner!

RIP Osprey Family. I’ll always wonder what happened to you!