{"id":63243,"date":"2018-09-10T04:27:20","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T10:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=63243"},"modified":"2018-09-10T06:08:14","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T12:08:14","slug":"a-young-and-inexperienced-osprey-loses-a-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/10\/a-young-and-inexperienced-osprey-loses-a-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"A Young And Inexperienced Osprey Loses A Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sure this\u00a0juvenile Osprey worked hard for the fish but what looked to me like a\u00a0rookie mistake cost it a meal.<\/p>\n

And speaking of rookie mistakes I made a few of my own with this bird. I won’t go into most of the details of why but they involved the intricacies of combining driving with photographing birds, awkward shooting angles out of my pickup window, an uncooperative power window, swapping lenses\u00a0at inconvenient times and the panic\u00a0that sets in when you know your bumbling is causing you to miss shots that could potentially be very interesting.. <\/em><\/p>\n

That panic combined with rushing caused me to stupidly forget to zoom from 300 to 400mm on the first two shots below and it shows in lack of image quality. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/80, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 300mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When the Osprey was landing here in the deep shade of trees in the mountains\u00a0yesterday morning\u00a0we could see a fish in its talons but by the time I got my lens on the bird the fish was\u00a0hanging over a short, broken branch sticking out from the tree. I’m quite sure that at this point that rear talon of its left foot wasn’t penetrating the fish.<\/p>\n

Why\u00a0the bird let go of\u00a0the fish\u00a0I just don’t know – youthful naivet\u00e9? Perhaps the bird wasn’t particularly hungry at the moment. Or it’s even possible that problems with its right foot caused it to release the fish from its talons prematurely (more info on that possibility\u00a0to follow).<\/p>\n

The fish looks about as dead as it can get, right?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/160, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 300mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

It wasn’t. It started flopping\u00a0and soon fell to the ground before the Osprey could react.<\/p>\n

At this point I switched to my 500mm lens.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/320, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The bamboozled Osprey looked down a few times (I’m sure it couldn’t see the fish on the ground because of all the leaves in the understory) and then it just looked… confused.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0 speaking of confused, keep an eye on that right clenched foot as we proceed through the following photos. I still don’t know what was going on with that foot.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/400, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In what appeared to me to be a combination of youthful awkwardness and frustration over losing the fish the bird would often turn a little on the perch and open its wings, flapping them slightly but not attempting to take off. This photo is full frame (not cropped).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1000, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Occasionally it looked down again. Here I’m not quite sure if it was looking at that right foot or in the direction the fish disappeared but I believe it was the latter. Notice the foot position.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I felt some pretty intense empathy for the bird because it lost the fish but based on that engorged crop it sure\u00a0wasn’t going hungry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is one of the last shots I got of the bird before it took off. I botched the takeoff and flight shots because I had just switched back to my smaller lens again\u00a0for possible takeoff and hadn’t quite been able to lock focus on the Osprey before it launched. Poop!<\/p>\n

I took 303 photos of this bird over 9+ minutes and in not a single one of them after the fish fell\u00a0was the right foot held in a “normal” position on the perch – it was always clenched and sometimes held fairly high off the branch. In several of those shots I could see the bottom of the foot fairly well and I could see no obvious\u00a0injury.<\/p>\n

I can only guess what was\u00a0going on with that foot, if anything.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I’m sure this juvenile Osprey worked hard for the fish but what looked to me like a rookie mistake cost it a meal.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63252,"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":[6,334,392,718],"tags":[141,190,240,719,311],"class_list":["post-63243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-osprey-diurnal-raptors","tag-fish","tag-juvenile","tag-osprey","tag-pandion-haliaetus","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/osprey-8705b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gs3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63243","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=63243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}