Osprey at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

Although I’ve never seen an Osprey at Malheur before and was told that they’ve failed to establish nests there because they can’t spot fish in the muddy water in the middle of summer, I managed to get the best shots I’ve ever gotten of one on this trip.

This Osprey was circling the small pond at the visitor’s center as I pulled up, so naturally I watched as it made several passes over the pond.

Osprey

Although I got shots of it on passes where it failed to catch a fish, it was behind a tree when it caught this whopper and I had to settle for a shot of it carrying the huge trout

Osprey with trout

to a perch

Osprey with trout

where it could eat its catch.

Assuming that it would take a while to eat that big of a fish, I decided to get

closer, using the blind at the east end of the pond. Even though the Osprey seemed irritated by my presence

Osprey with trout

it continued its feast

Osprey with trout

long enough that I finally decided I wasn’t going to get a better shot than the ones I had already gotten and decided to look for more birds.

5 thoughts on “Osprey at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge”

  1. There is an Osprey nesting pole (put up by the local power company a long time ago) right beside the highway 5 minutes down the road from me. Every year I watch to see when they start using it again and this past weekend I saw a pair in it for the first time this year – I love watching them. Year before last one of their offspring landed in a tree in our neighbors yard – shots I got weren’t very good though .

    1. There’s a nest down the road from me, too, but I haven’t managed to get down to it yet. I still prefer to go to special places that have lots of birds rather than to park myself in one spot watching a particular bird. Guess I’ll have to overcome that if I want to get really great shots.

        1. Nice shot but it would be even nicer with a 400mm lens. Good bird shots seem to demand powerful lenses because most birds except Herons and Eagles don’t seem to like people too close. Wonder why?

          1. Can’t imagine why 🙂 I’ve settled on wanting to get a 6D now I just need to find the $ 🙁 Added to that is the 6D uses a different size lens mount and larger diameter lenses so my filters etc won’t work and lenses need to be replaced – but I only had the 2 lenses and neither were very good so I’m not upset about that.but I’ll never be able to afford the L series white lenses – way out of my price range. We’ll see come the time.

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