Bird Watching: Raising Aussie Osprey #7, 1 by MargaretK

MargaretK wrote:
It was a gloomy, overcast and very sultry day today. It tried hard to rain and eleven drops actually made it to earth - (official count). When I got to the nest site close on 5pm Aussie was on the nest squawking loudly and looking downwards, which immediately alerted me to Mum's presence. Sure enough, she was on the low branch of the tree next to the nest tree. I was greatly relieved to see her with a freshly caught fish as I think it would be highly unlikely that she would have been given it by the male.

I was looking at some of my earliest shots of the parent birds back in August. At that time, the female's left eye still had an iris and pupil, but it was dull and had no life to it. My shots from then are not clear but I'm sure I can see blood on several of them and I'm assuming the injury is quite a recent one, especially in light of the marked deterioration over several weeks to what now appears to be complete blindness in her left eye.

Aussie has not experienced any ill effects to her Blowfish encounter. She was obviously very hungry today and jumped around the nest on several occasions having hissy fits because Mum wasn't bringing her any of her catch. Pity about the lighting, because some of her in-flight shots today were actually in focus, which is a bit of a miracle.