Hi folks,
Occasionally I've seen osprey soaring over the lake; most
memorable time was last year on July 4, right at pied-billed grebe
hatching time. Literally. While I had the small binocs trained on the
osprey overhead, my husband had the "good" binocs on the egg
below, cracking to produce a wet baby grebe. I didn't argue with him
over the binocs because I'd seen my own baby grebe hatch the day before!
I was impressed in both hatching situations to see the parent choose to
leave the tiny slimy newcomer in the nest with its siblings while s/he
took the egg fragments one by one in her beak, dove under the lilypads
and presumably deposited it under them, then returned. I figured it must
be more important to remove the highly visible (?) light-colored egg
fragments than to stay physically with the newborn young on the
nest...interesting.
Anyway, back to the osprey, last Sunday morning it was perched on
a branch on top of the island, being attended by a crow. When I sat on a
bench to watch it, it turned its head to "look" right at me. It looked
away, back again, then away again and paid attention to its feathers. In
a few minutes, because of my and/or the crow's presence or some other
factor, it took off, pursued by the crow at close range. A couple of
times the osprey lowered its talons--not clear to me whether it was to
fend off the crow or to balance itself somehow, or for some other reason.
They flew off to the south, toward Woodland Park Zoo. After a few minutes
the osprey returned along with three crows; all swooped right overhead, a
marvelous view of the osprey's underwings. Went off to south. Reappeared
overhead a second time, then I headed off to the south myself along the
path. Didn't see osprey & co. again. But a nice way to spend part of a
Sunday morning!

Trileigh Stroh

Green Lake (soon to be Lincoln Park), Seattle