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In recent years, nesting Osprey have become a common sight throughout much of eastern Ontario. A few days ago, I wrote about a pair of Osprey that had built a nest atop of a light pole over the projection booth at a local drive-in theatre. However, our favourite pair are much less social than the drive-in Osprey, or any of the other local birds that nest on several platforms in this area. Instead, this pair has built their nest on a very tall standing snag tree on a small island in a somewhat out of the way conservation area.

When hiking the trails at this location, we always take a rest break on the shoreline at a vantage point where we can observe the activity around the nest. I shot the above photos on April 17, 2005. One of the Osprey was busy with renovations, carrying sticks to the nest as seen in the top photo. Yesterday, we visited the nest and found both Osprey sitting up top. They took turns to do a bit of flying around. Although the distance from shore is quite great, I shot a brief movie clip using my still camera (approx. 440kb). It’s not too great, but I like watching the Osprey drop down to the nest from above. As in the above photo, with wings spread, it drops softly down, feet first, to land on the edge of the nest. You probably won’t be able to see this at all in the movie clip, but the Osprey is carrying a fish in its talons. We watched through binoculars and could see the fish which was deposited in the nest. A little while later, the other Osprey in the nest, invisible from our vantage point on shore, left the nest and went for a long flight around the lake. The remaining bird sat on the edge of the nest. After awhile, it seemed to become restless and began making soft, plaintive ppeeeeewwwhhhh whistles while bending its head to look about the sky above. We imagined it thinking, “I hope she’s going to get home soon!”. A short while later, the other Osprey returned to the nest, standing inside and stretching its wings up and down, turning about a few times before settling back down out of our line of view. This pair is particularly enjoyable to watch because they usually seem to stay close together and interact quite a lot. I think that’s because the nest is in such a huge tree where they can either stand together on the nest or perch on the branches just below. With the “platform Osprey”, we’ve noticed that the pairs are not together so much — probably because it would just be too crowded — so one is often seen perched in the nearest tree, which isn’t always that close.

Tags: Osprey, Pandion haliaetus