An Osprey Day

It’s possible to see hundreds of different birds at Theler Wetlands throughout the year so you never know what to expect.  I go there precisely because you can see so many different birds.  Still, there are days when one, particular bird takes center stage.  On a recent trip, three (possibly four) Ospreys captured our attention.

We had just started our walk when Leslie spotted this Osprey across the river.  

It was too far away to get a very good shot, but I was surprised when another Osprey suddenly appeared from the opposite direction

and flew so close that the biggest challenge was trying not to cut off a body part when taking a picture.

It barely glanced at us before circling over the river.  

It was obvious on its second pass that it had spotted a fish,

It dropped from the sky so quickly it was impossible to keep it in frame and hit the water so hard that my Canon had a hard time figuring out what to focus on.

I would have been more disappointed if I had missed a shot of it catching a salmon, but, as it turned out, it missed its target.

We must have spent nearly a half hour observing the Osprey on this visit, but on our visit a week later we didn’t see a single Osprey.

3 thoughts on “An Osprey Day”

  1. Just wonderful – have you read “H is for Hawk” by Helen McDonald? I love watching raptors mainly because I was so moved by Hopkins’s “The Windhover” … My heart, in hiding
    Stirred for a bird – the achieve of, the mastery of the
    Thing!”

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