Bird Watching: Raising Aussie Osprey #5, 0 by MargaretK

MargaretK wrote:
Thanks Kim, Mrs Ed, Pelle and GP.

Well, Aussie's well and truly flying. Unfortunately I didn't manage any shots of it. When I first got there she was out on a limb; Mum was on a lower one on the other side of the nest. She was obviously hungry and kept calling and when it all got too much for her, she flew onto the vertical branch that Mum was on all yesterday afternoon. There's a tree between the nest and that branch and so I wasn't able to follow her flight but then by moving a dozen paces I located her. I didn't even have my SLR in my hands at the time. I was using the movie feature on my point and shoot to take some footage of Aussie for some friends and although the quality is very poor, that is where the first flight that I have seen is captured.

She stayed on the upright branch for about ten minutes and then flew back to the nest and was flying confidently between the nest and various support branches on the nest tree. At one stage she became really stir crazy and flew off to the left side of the bay a good couple of hundred metres before returning and landing easily a the nest.

The male did a fly by of the nest, which again created great excitement and he then flew off over to the other side of the bay. He hadn't returned by the time the shadow had draped the nest. As OP pointed out in the last thread, the fledgling will be kept a bit hungry to encourage it to start thinking of food as something other than what is brought to it by Dad. That really seemed to be the case today. Mind you, by the amount of guano she was expelling, she isn't starving to death, even though she probably thinks she is.

Here's a shot of her on the vertical branch.