Evergreen sporting goods store offers “bird's eye view” of popular fishing pond

By Dax VanFossen
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EVERGREEN -A longtime Evergreen Sporting Goods store has installed a new “bird's eye view” in their popular fishing pond area.

​Snappy’s Sports Senter has long been a popular meeting place, especially the fishing pond behind the building for a number of years in the Flathead Valley. 
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But it has also been a place for education, for adults and children alike with FWP programs like hooked on fishing, teaching children the benefits of catch and release.

But Snappy’s has taken things one step further by adding a new feature here at the fishing pond which has welcomed two new visitors. The pond behind Snappy’s was built in 1998, and shortly after that owner B.J. Lupton says the osprey began using his fishing pond as well.

The new osprey nest built a year ago, went uninhabited last year. But with the help of his son John Lupton, the nest is now active with a pair of osprey, all the fish they can handle, and high tech cameras for the public to watch online.

“I’m told they’re three years old and they mate for the first time at age three, and we’ve got a mated pair, the betrothal was pretty obvious, they built a nest in five or six days, it’s solid and they’re definitely taking to the platform,” B.J. Lupton said.

Lupton told MTN News that Snappy’s is all about conservation and
education and the Osprey Nest will help add to that and he hopes the public will get involved.

“This is kinda fun. This is mother nature, this is the food chain, this is a beautiful thing and two birds raising their young. And as an added footnote, you know we’ve got a naming contest on the website for the parents, and then if we get lucky and we get eggs and chicks, we’re going to have a naming contest for the chicks and have the whole public involved in that process.”

The cameras are already up and running and if you’re lucky enough, you can watch the mated pair dive for trout at Snappy’s pond, and quite possibly, raise a family. Pardon the expression, but it appears, that Snappy’s Sports Senter is now really “For the Birds”.
Click here to view the osprey nest at Snappy's.

http://www.kpax.com/story/31727577/evergreen-sporting-goods-store-installs-new-birds-eye-view-in-popular-fishing-pond