Bird Watching: Growing in an Osprey's garden #5, 1 by Calypsophoto

Calypsophoto wrote:
A fresh fish being delivered by the male parent.
Only once in three years have I seen the female parent actually return to the nest with a fish, whilst the chick is in the nest.
I hope to post an image of this rare capture in the next few days.
Soon the male parent will start to deliver small fish directly to the chick (no parent in the nest) to teach it how to extract fish from the claw; not always an easy task as the talons close quite tightly (i.e. lock) onto the fish when it is being extracted from the water.
If the fish is too heavy to be lifted, the bird can drown.
Note this particular fish has the head missing; this is what we see in 95% of deliveries.
The male parent takes the fish to a nearby branch or rock and first eats the head, before delivery.
When flying with a fish in the claws all ospreys very cleverly orient the fish so that the head is pointing directly into the wind/line of flight to reduce areodynamic drag.
This occurs even when flying with a large fish caught with both claws; seems impossible, but I have photographed it.


This message was edited Nov 18, 2009 7:15 PM