Hi everyone,

I have an image on my website that I thought folks might be interested in. This shot was taken in August while on river trip, in a location where I was able to get higher than an active osprey nest and shoot the two chicks (and two adults when they were around) in the nest. I shot for most of one morning and observed behavior I hadn't seen before that was quite interesting. The chicks were not fledged, were probably 2/3rds grown, mostly feathered though still with some down showing and the tailfeathers not grown in yet.

In addition to the usual behaviors of waiting, looking, eating, pooping and some wing flapping, both chicks did several 'stretches' that I captured on film. While watching them it seemed clear that these were instinctive stretches that got the chicks into the classic osprey hunting dive as early 'practice' for hunting. It wasn't so obvious watching at a distance, but in the images (click the link below for one of the images) the position of the feet, head, wings and butt are exactly those assumed by the adults when diving after a fish. As everyone on the list no doubt knows, osprey are the only raptor that dives into the water (or at all) with both the talons and the head in that position. An eagle going after a fish will grab in the water with the talons, but will keep the head up. The chick also looks pretty funny in the image because of the lack of tailfeathers - except that the look on the face and in the eyes clearly shows a non-nonsense predator in the making . I!
wouldn
't want to be a trout...!

For the photographers out there, this was taken with a Canon 1Ds Mark II with a 500mm IS lens + 1.4X extender for a total of 700mm of lens - and also was cropped in Photoshop to focus on the birds.

Here's the link.

http://www.tubbsphoto.com/-/tubbsphoto/detail.asp?photoID=2619747&cat=37217

John Tubbs
Snoqualmie, WA
www.tubbsphoto.com
johntubbs at comcast.net