\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nThe female had barely folded her wings when the male (no discernible necklace)\u00a0was out’a there.\u00a0 No matter which bird was leaving the nest, the one left behind would always duck down like this to avoid having its head taken off by the\u00a0wings\u00a0of the launching Osprey.<\/p>\n
The somewhat unusual background in these images is a mountain in shade.\u00a0 I like the backdrop for its novelty – most images of this species at the nest I’ve seen have sky in the background.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
These are images I haven’t posted before but when I posted other shots of this Osprey pair soon after these photos were taken, Mike Shaw made what I thought was an astute observation in a comment:<\/p>\n
“They seem to inhabit their own world, not worrying too much or drawing too much attention from other avian species. They get a free pass from normal territorial birds due to their non-competing fish diet and they\u2019re big enough that others don\u2019t eat them. The Swiss of the bird world –\u00a0neutral citizens<\/em>.”<\/p>\nMike’s comment has always stuck with me.\u00a0 I have never seen a dispute between an Osprey and another hawk, falcon\u00a0or owl\u00a0– behavior which is extremely common among most raptor species.\u00a0 An exception among raptors is the Bald Eagle which also eats fish and Mike of course is keenly aware of that.\u00a0 Great Horned Owls are also known to occasionally prey on Osprey but normal territorial disputes with other raptors seem to be relatively uncommon.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t have as many Osprey opportunities as folks do back east so when I get a chance to observe and photograph their behaviors I take it.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21733,"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":[334,391,718],"tags":[500,479,1456,230,240,719],"class_list":["post-21731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-osprey-diurnal-raptors","tag-flaming-gorge","tag-incubation","tag-necklace","tag-nesting","tag-osprey","tag-pandion-haliaetus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/osprey-0653-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5Ev","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21731","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=21731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"osprey](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/osprey-0653-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n