{"id":109988,"date":"2022-04-14T05:50:51","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T11:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=109988"},"modified":"2022-04-14T07:49:22","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T13:49:22","slug":"an-osprey-in-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/14\/an-osprey-in-the-city\/","title":{"rendered":"An Osprey In The City"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t get a chance with Ospreys very often and one in the city is even more unusual.<\/p>\n

Two days ago Mike, my good friend and neighbor, alerted me to a couple of “raptors” that he saw in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley. Further discussion strongly suggested that they were Ospreys so I made a mental note to look for them at the first opportunity. Yesterday, on my way home from running an errand in the valley, I checked out the location and found one of them.<\/p>\n

Once again I didn’t have my big lens with me so I was using my ‘baby lens’ but I did get a few documentary photos of marginal quality. Normally I wouldn’t post photos like these but I’m excited to find an Osprey in the city so I couldn’t resist.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @321 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The Osprey, a male I believe, was circling the water below when I arrived. Trying to get decent photos was highly frustrating because, except for one small patch of blue, the skies were milky white with clouds which makes a terrible background and tends to put poor light on the underside of the bird..<\/p>\n

He flew the same loop around the water four or five times while I was there and each time I had to wait for him to get the blue patch in the background. But by then he was always banking steeply in a turn and looking straight down at the water for fish so I never did get a good look at his face in my photos. I think it’s an interesting posture but I sure wish we could see his face.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @321 mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Time and again this flight pose was the best I could get. To make matters worse, the autofocus on my older 7D Mark II was acting up so most of my photos were soft. I’m not sure I’ve ever wished more strongly that I had my best birding lens and best camera with me when I didn’t.<\/p>\n

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Sharp eyes may have already noticed that he was banded on both legs, with a federal band on his left leg and a colored band on his right. Hopefully at some point I’ll be able to get better photos that allow me to read more of the numbers so I can report them to the Bird Banding Lab.<\/p>\n

Based on what Mike said and what I observed I don’t believe the Osprey spends much of the day at this location. Instead I suspect he has a routine of fishing various small bodies of water in the valley so I’ll have to get lucky to find him again.<\/p>\n

But you know I’m going to try. For many of my readers seeing Ospreys is almost an everyday occurrence but for me an Osprey sighting, especially in the city, really gets my juices flowing.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: I’m aware of several nesting platforms in my area that are routinely used by Ospreys from year to year but I’m not fond enough of Osprey photos taken at artificial platforms to make the effort. That’s just a personal quirk of mine.<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t get a chance with Ospreys very often and one in the city is even more unusual.\u00a0 (3 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,718],"tags":[1624,3245,146,211,240,719,5471,311],"class_list":["post-109988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-osprey-diurnal-raptors","tag-banded","tag-bird-banding-lab","tag-flight","tag-male","tag-osprey","tag-pandion-haliaetus","tag-salt-lake-valley","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/osprey-9799-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-sC0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109988"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110021,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109988\/revisions\/110021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}