A osprey whose foot was tangled in a mass of twine should be soaring free over Virginia Beach today, thanks to Dominion Virginia Power employee Dan Anzur. The bird was trapped in a nest atop a utility tower 110 feet above General Booth Boulevard this past Sunday. On a bright sunny afternoon, Anzur and his helper, lineman trainee Jeremy Hartley, came to the rescue as if osprey liberation was all in a day's work.

Silhouetted by blue sky, the two scaled the tower. Once at the nest, Anzur, lashed to the framework by a safety belt, threw a blanket over the big bird and went to work on the orange twine.

"There was line in between his toes, and wrapped around its foot," Anzur, a Chesapeake resident, later said.

After he made sure the osprey's leg was not injured, Anzur removed the blanket. The big bird spread its wings and shot a hostile look at its rescuer and Anzur raised the blanket for protection once again.

Then, saved from certain death, the osprey took flight.

Down below, applause arose from several Dominion employees, along with Brian Salem, refuge officer at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, and Reese Lukei, research associate for the Center for Conservation Biology at William and Mary.

Lukei, an osprey expert, set the rescue in motion after he received an e-mail from Miriam Bryant. Bryant and her family had the presence of mind to realize that the osprey perched on the nest was actually trapped.

The Bryants live next to the Dominion Power right-of-way near Strawbridge Shopping Center. For as far as the eye can see, tall steel lattice work towers string a network of electrical lines for the region across a grassy swath.

Two ospreys could be seen going to and from a nest on top of another tower, but this osprey was different.

"We stopped and watched it try multiple times to get free with no success," Bryant said.

Ospreys tend to gather discarded fishing line and twine as nesting material and it can be fatal. When the big bird rose up to fly, about a foot of line could be seen tethering its foot to the nest.

Lukei called Animal Control, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, United States Fish and Wildlife Service and Dominion Virginia Power to get the rescue under way.

Fortunately it was a Sunday and Dominion Power's weekend crew had no other emergencies. Before anyone could climb the tower safely, workers had to shift all the power from the main transmission lines to other lines in the area, which took a good part of the morning.

Then the rescue began. After the bird flew off, Anzur and Hartley destroyed the nest.

Lukei examined the sticks and debris and said it appeared the nest had not been used this year. He surmised the unlucky osprey just happened to perch there and get caught in the snarl of twine.

About 200 osprey nests are in South Hampton Roads, Lukei said. Many of them are on electrical poles, so Dominion Power tries to be good landlords when they can.

"It was neat," said Anzur, a transmission supervisor of electric lines. "It's always nice to do a good thing.