April 12 turned out to be an absolutely top notch day. Lyle and I went to Firth bright and early, before sunrise, to get set up to take pictures of a pair of Osprey. The first thing we saw were some pheasants disappearing into the brush. Lyle went looking for them later. There were a few ducks and geese on the river. The geese were taking particular interest in the raccoon on the bank not more than five yards from them.
The osprey were not in the nest when we got there, so we spent time taking pictures of the other birds we saw. They were, Red breasted Merganser, Common Merganser(male and female), Canadian Goose, and Wild Turkeys. As we watched and waited, we noticed the osprey would come into and out of the nest a quite regular intervals as they were adding to the nest for the females comfort after she lays her eggs. We also noticed they had favorite perching places all around within 200 yards form the nest. The picture below is one of the few I got with them both facing my way so I could tell which one was the female. Look closely at the one with the dark feathers on the breast(I call it a necklace). She's the boss. Her nest has to be perfect for her comfort after she lays her eggs because she won't move from there for the month it takes to incubate them. The male will provide all the food, only fish, for the whole month and for some time after the young are hatched.
Remember the two Canadian geese? One of them tried to take up squatters rights on the nest while both osprey were away. It was only on the nest for about half a minute when it decided to flee for its life as both osprey came after it in hot pursuit.
For about fifteen minutes after the goose vacated, the pair sat in the nest making sure there would be no more problems. They then decided they didn't like the geese swimming around on the river below them in such close proximity, so they both set up taking turns at aerial attacks on the geese. When this started taking place Lyle yelled at me to see if I was getting any pictures of the attacks. Fortunately I was even though I was laughing so hard it was difficult getting the camera on track to take them.
A short time after encouraging the geese to move a little farther down river, I saw a hawk flying up river, and as it drew closer the osprey flew up and urged it to just keep going. What a beautiful day, a lot of fun and some great pictures of some beautiful birds.
