Bird Watching: Osprey season 2011. The nest is a busy place., 0 by MargaretK

MargaretK wrote:
Jan, what you have witnessed is awful. I haven't seen any behaviour such as you describe with any of our ducks, but I have seen a group of male Pacific Black Ducks harassing a single female with less than honourable intentions. At our local lake/swamp the main duckling predator seems to be the long-necked tortoises.

Duc, I took the 7D with my 400mm lens back to the place where I bought it. They'll test it out this week. The problem doesn't seem to exist with the 500mm lens and when Denis put the 7D body onto his 800mm lens they were likewise as sharp as. It may be that the lens-camera combination needs calibrating.

Well, one of the chicks has fledged! I received a call from Madam X yesterday to say that one of the chicks was out on the branch flapping its wings like mad. She doesn't know which one it was, and by the time I arrived there yesterday afternoon, all three chicks were on the nest and showed no signs of wanting to leave. I suspect it may be the littlest as it's the one which has been lifting off really high. I haven't seen the other two hovering as high, yet.

They are also feeding themselves. They've been doing a bit of picking at remnants for a few days, but yesterday I saw Big Hook arrive with a fish and leave it for them. She flew off for a bath and returned to the pole branch to preen. Again the littlest one was the leader, hoeing into the fish with great gusto, whilst the other two watched, fascinated.

I was really worried about the little one yesterday. I could see a long, brown strand hanging from its beak. It did a lot of head shaking and scratching, trying to dislodge whatever it was. My mind ran riot and I imagined that it had been the one that had fledged and had gone into the water and had somehow come up with a weed covered bit of fishing line and it had swallowed a hook. Just before I left, it had freed itself from whatever it was. When I downloaded the shots, I could see that it was a long strand of fish guts.

One of its siblings was fascinated by the decoration and stared for minutes at a time. It didn't attempt to get hold of it.