{"id":5651,"date":"2012-05-20T18:09:26","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T00:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=5651"},"modified":"2012-09-02T16:10:31","modified_gmt":"2012-09-02T22:10:31","slug":"nesting-osprey-of-flaming-gorge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/20\/nesting-osprey-of-flaming-gorge\/","title":{"rendered":"Nesting Osprey Of Flaming Gorge"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s lots of great Osprey photos “out there” but sadly none of them are mine.\u00a0 I’ve tried with this species\u00a0time and again and something has always gone wrong – crappy perches, poor light, couldn’t get close and most often I couldn’t even find the birds.\u00a0 But recently I finally<\/em> got some\u00a0shots of them I like.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned in an earlier post<\/a> Mia and I spent three days at Flaming Gorge this week.\u00a0\u00a0I was delighted to find a nesting pair of\u00a0Osprey as I’ve had very little luck with this species in the past.\u00a0 The nest was on a nesting platform right next to a boat-launching ramp so the birds were used to human traffic and went about their normal routine even with vehicles, boats and fishermen in the vicinity.\u00a0 There were no chicks yet but they were obviously incubating eggs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"osprey-1221\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

One bird of the pair was always on the nest of course but occasionally the other Osprey would fly by very close and then\u00a0immediately leave again\u00a0– it seemed to me that it was “just checking up” to make sure that everything was ok at the nest.\u00a0 I believe this bird is the male.\u00a0 Sexing\u00a0Osprey can be tricky but on average males have fewer (if any) dark markings on chin, breast and sides of neck than do females.\u00a0 You’ll see what\u00a0I think is the female of the pair\u00a0a couple of images later.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"osprey-1138\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Another shot of the male in flight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"osprey-1087\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0After they would exchange places on the nest the female (notice the dark marking on the neck\/breast) would also do the occasional close fly-by just to check up on her mate and the nest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"osprey-0987\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Here the male is bringing a small fish to the nest.\u00a0 I’ve included two pre-landing poses – one with wings forward…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"osprey-0988\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

and one with the wings back.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"osprey-1010\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

The male did something I didn’t expect here.\u00a0 We had seen the female bring a fish in to the vicinity of the nest, land on a nearby pole and then eat it herself\u00a0but hadn’t seen either bird deliver a fish to its mate on the nest.\u00a0 But it looked like that was exactly the intent of the male on this trip because he landed on the nest with the fish.\u00a0 But only for a few seconds – in fact he didn’t even completely fold his wings before he took off\u00a0again and flew to a far away pole to presumably eat the fish.\u00a0 In this shot he’s taking off after\u00a0only a second or two on the nest.\u00a0\u00a0It almost\u00a0seemed like a “touch and go” landing that human pilots practice.\u00a0 I like the “bewildered” look on the face of the female…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"osprey-1101\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Some of the shots I liked were obvious landing shots where I didn’t much appreciate the perch the bird was approaching (usually an unnatural\u00a0wooden post on the nesting platform) so I took the liberty of cloning out a bit of the post if it showed in the frame, as it did here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"osprey-1111\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0But other times I was able to catch one of the birds landing on the nest so I didn’t have to clone anything (I hate cloning stuff out).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"osprey-0657\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

From one of our shooting positions we were able to get mountains in the background.\u00a0 It makes for a more contrasty image so the white exposure is tricky but I’m still pleased with these shots because most images I see of\u00a0this species\u00a0near the nest have only sky backgrounds.\u00a0 I like this\u00a0effect for a change.\u00a0 Here the female is coming in to relieve the male on the nest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"osprey<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Almost the same shot as the previous image but I like the concentration on landing, the position of the feet and the better light on the face of the male.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"flaming-gorge-8185\"<\/p>\n

I couldn’t resist including this image to show you\u00a0one of the reasons Mia and I are\u00a0so enchanted with “The Gorge”.\u00a0 Even\u00a0when there aren’t a lot of birds (as\u00a0on this trip) the visual splendors go a long ways in making up for it.\u00a0 We\u00a0camp in a favorite\u00a0primitive camp site and this is what we wake up to.\u00a0\u00a0I took this shot just a few minutes before some of the images I’ve included here.<\/p>\n

What a place!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Postscript:<\/em> The only downside to this particular trip was that I developed a “hot tooth” on the third day so I had to put my tail between my legs and head for\u00a0home earlier than planned (a\u00a0drive I won’t forget).\u00a0 The next day I had a root canal, from which I’m still recovering.\u00a0 My dentist took me in on an emergency basis and saved my bacon – for which I’ll be forever grateful.\u00a0 Thank you Dr. O’brien!\u00a0 And Mia, for helping me to get through it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s lots of great Osprey photos “out there” but sadly none of them are mine.\u00a0 I’ve tried with this species\u00a0time and again and something has always gone wrong – crappy perches, poor light, couldn’t get close and most often I couldn’t even find the birds.\u00a0 But recently I finally got some\u00a0shots of them I like. As I mentioned in an earlier post Mia and I spent three days at Flaming Gorge this week.\u00a0\u00a0I was delighted to find a nesting pair of\u00a0Osprey as I’ve had very little luck with this species in the past.\u00a0 The nest was on a nesting platform right next to a boat-launching ramp so the birds were used to human traffic and went about their normal routine even with vehicles, boats and fishermen in the vicinity.\u00a0 There were no chicks yet but they were obviously incubating eggs.   \u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc One bird of the pair was always on the nest of course but occasionally the other Osprey would fly by very close and then\u00a0immediately leave again\u00a0– it seemed to me that it was “just checking up” to make sure that everything was ok at the nest.\u00a0 I believe this bird is the male.\u00a0 Sexing\u00a0Osprey can be tricky but on average males have fewer (if any) dark markings on chin, breast and sides of neck than do females.\u00a0 You’ll see what\u00a0I think is the female of the pair\u00a0a couple of images later.     \u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc \u00a0Another shot of the male…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"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],"tags":[141,500,146,228,240],"class_list":["post-5651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","tag-fish","tag-flaming-gorge","tag-flight","tag-nest","tag-osprey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1t9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651","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=5651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}