{"id":39203,"date":"2016-05-01T05:50:19","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T11:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39203"},"modified":"2016-05-01T07:21:26","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T13:21:26","slug":"an-osprey-behavioral-mystery-any-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/01\/an-osprey-behavioral-mystery-any-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"An Osprey Behavioral Mystery – Any Thoughts?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bird behaviors fascinate me but some of these have me stumped.<\/p>\n

Friend and fellow bird photographer Jerry Ellison has recently been observing and photographing a nesting pair of Osprey here in northern Utah. Yesterday morning he documented some behaviors that puzzled him so he sent me these images and descriptions of what he witnessed to see if I was familiar with the behaviors. I’m not but I’m thoroughly intrigued by them.<\/p>\n

So with Jerry’s encouragement and permission\u00a0I’m posting his images and descriptions on Feathered Photography in the hope that some reader(s) may be able to provide\u00a0insight into the behavior. We’re really curious to know if anyone else has seen or heard of\u00a0anything like this.<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0image captions below I’ve quoted and italicized Jerry’s words to me in emails. Anything not quoted and italicized is my own.\u00a0Based on the image file numbers all photos are presented in the order they were taken\u00a0yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

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\"osprey<\/p>\n

“Female fussing and arranging the nest”.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"osprey<\/p>\n

“Male returning to the nest with more nesting material”.<\/p>\n

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\"osprey<\/p>\n

“The male then rose up in the air and came down on her left side,\u00a0then rose up again and came down on her right side,\u00a0then rose up again and came down on her back\u00a0while thumping her back with his talons…almost like running in place”.<\/em> This image (and the following one)\u00a0illustrate what Jerry described.<\/p>\n

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\"osprey<\/p>\n

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\"osprey<\/p>\n

Then “he defecated all over her back and tail for about 5 seconds”…<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"osprey<\/p>\n

“and then flew away”…<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"osprey<\/p>\n

“leaving her to sit on the eggs”.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"osprey<\/p>\n

Then the male “returned with more nest material”…<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"osprey<\/p>\n

and they continued to work on the nest\u00a0as if nothing unusual had occurred.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two things about this encounter have\u00a0us puzzled – the male thumping the female on her back with his feet (“almost like running in place<\/em>“) and the obviously deliberate defecation of the male on the female’s back. Jerry is virtually certain that the birds did not copulate or even attempt to copulate during the encounter.<\/p>\n

Over the\u00a0years I’ve spent a fair amount of time watching the breeding behaviors of Osprey and both behaviors are new to me so I researched Birds of North America Online and found no mention of either behavior even though they describe Osprey breeding and nesting behaviors in\u00a0some\u00a0detail. An internet search also came up empty (though it may be that I just didn’t\u00a0use the right key words in my search).<\/p>\n

Jerry and I would both appreciate any insight\u00a0into these behaviors. Thank you in advance for any feedback.<\/p>\n

And thanks to Jerry for providing the\u00a0images and\u00a0descriptions.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Bird behaviors fascinate me but some of these have me stumped.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39208,"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":[5,334,391,718],"tags":[2946,2945,2947,2948,1014,1307,240,719],"class_list":["post-39203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-osprey-diurnal-raptors","tag-breeding-behavior","tag-itah","tag-jerry-ellison","tag-male-defecate-on-female","tag-mating-behavior","tag-nest-building","tag-osprey","tag-pandion-haliaetus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/osprey-1293-jerry-ellison.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-acj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39203","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=39203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}