Subject: [Tweeters] osprey and eagle
Date: Jul 11 12:18:20 2007
From: Abella, Sally - Sally.Abella at METROKC.GOV


This may be common, but I haven't seen it before, so I thought I would
share. Yesterday morning, we were water quality sampling on Pipe Lake in
Maple Valley and noticed that a single osprey was persistently swooping
down and harassing a soaring bald eagle, keeping up the pressure until
the eagle finally changed course and quickly headed away from the lake.
We watched for about 5 minutes, and the osprey actually hit the eagle a
couple of times from above. I've certainly seen lots of mobbing activity
by crows and smaller birds on raptors, but never such persistent attacks
by one species of raptor on another. The odd thing was that as soon as
the eagle left, so did the osprey, so we couldn't figure out if there
was a nest involved somewhere. I didn't notice any prey items either.
Just bad temper on the osprey's part?
Sally

Sally Bartley Abella
Lake Stewardship Program
Water and Land Resources Division
King County DNRP
201 S. Jackson St, Ste 600
Seattle, WA 98194-3855
phone: 206-296-8382
FAX: 206-296-0192
NOTE: my new email address is Sally.Abella at kingcounty.gov