Baby Ospreys!
While I was out birding, I was told by another birder that there were chicks in the nest at Fay Bainbridge, so after I failed to find the Arctic Tern (again), I headed over to see what was going on.
In these pictures, you can see the two chicks. They are quite close to being ready to fledge, and each one spent about 15 minutes exercising their wings and doing short test flights from one side of the nest to the other. There was one adult sitting next to the nest when I arrived, and it left as I was setting up my gear. After that, there were three flights past the nest by mom or dad, but until the very end of my stay, neither adult bird returned to the nest. The last photo in this series shows an adult bird that flew in from behind the nest, and then very quickly again exited stage left. It may have left a fish, but my view of the vast was obscured. All other photos are of the two chicks.
The parent birds, it seems, were acting like many parents of teenagers who’d really like the kid to move out without really wanted to say so directly. It won’t be long until these kids do exactly that, from the state of their young but nicely feathered out wings.
