Master Of His Domain

New Bern, NC
35 05.91 N 077 01.95 W

Today we were out day sailing on the Neuse River with Nick.  At one point we passed by a day marker on a piling.  On top of the piling was an osprey nest.  Earlier in the week Dave and I passed the same nest and the mother osprey screamed at us for being too close to her nest.

We love ospreys.  They are grand birds of prey and marvelous fishermen.  We see them all over from Vermont and Maine down to southern Florida.    Of course they are most numerous in Chesapeake Bay where every piling in the water seems to have an osprey nest on board.

Back to the story.  A few minutes later I saw the father osprey.   He was flying just inches above the surface and he was carrying a huge fish.   I yelled at Nick to look.  We both watched the rest of the story.

The fish was really big.  It might have weighed more than 10 pounds.  The osprey was large but he proabaly didn't weigh more than a pound or two.   The fish probably weighed more than the osprey's whole family.   Several times before I've seen osprey trying to fly with too big a fish and being forced to drop the fish to keep from crashing.  That's what I thought would happen this time.

The osprey pounded his wings furiously.   He was so low that the fish's tail dragged in the water and the osprey's wing tips touched the water each flap. He was taking advantage of ground effect.  Flying for a plane or a bird is easier when flying lower than one wing's span to the ground. He'll never be able to fly higher I though.  Wrong.  As he came within 50 feet of the nest, the osprey reared back, stopped flapping and flared his wings.  He lifted.  The nest was only 8 feet above the water.   Up up he glided, losing speed every second.   Finally, he soared just above the nest at the same time his wings stalled and the father and the fish dropped neatly into the nest.

What a master of his domain.  That osprey knew exactly what he was doing and how to go about it and he executed that delicate maneuver perfectly.   We were honored to have witnessed it.

Andrea Ross captured an award winning photo of what I'm talking about (except that the fish we saw was much bigger)  See it here.