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Osprey In Flight
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joe_elwayParticipant
I returned to Virginia Beach today so I could get my flight home :( early tomorrow morning. The weather was rubbish. After surfing and drinking some coffee I headed out to a State Park called First Landing in the middle of the city.
The weather dried up so I could venture out. I soon found an observation post over looking two active Osprey nests. I watched for hours and caught a quick snap. I then ventured further into the park and found where they were fishing. After an hour or so I was rewarded with a couple of over flights.
I was praying my 350D auto focus wouldn’t let me down. Unfortunately, the grey skies don’t help this shot out:
Alan RossiterParticipantYeah, the sky didn’t do you any favours (or favors :wink: ). It should be simple enough to replace given that it seems a uniform colour and the fact that you seem to have the details of the osprey despite the sky blowout. I don’t get any perspective of their size but I’m sure they’d take a couple of kestrels for breakfast, eh?
It is an ospey, isn’t it? ps[rey in your title suggests one too many coffees :D
joe_elwayParticipantIt is indeed an Osprey. I’ve changed the thread title :-)
As for size … they are not as big as I’d thought. I’d only seen them on TV before and always assumed they were huge. Sure, they are bigger than a Kestrel, easily. I guess the wingspan is around 5 feet when fully stretched. I have a shot of one directly overhead where you can get an idea of the wing size.
There’s loads of these guys here. I found 3 nests today and heard another two. The female on the nest makes a lot of noise when a male from another site flies nearby … thus giving the locations away. I was surprised how close their nest sites can be to each other. I saw loads of artificial sites (platforms) in North Carolina but the ones today were all natural. They will screech and chase each other but they must be fairly tolerant.
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