In which I do undignified things to baby ospreys

[thanate]

This is me, holding a young osprey; she is about five weeks old and weighs about 1700 grams (which is how we know she's female, as males top out at 1500, and she doesn't yet have the distinctive v-shaped "necklace" of dark feathers that makes the best visual cue for females.) She has already got sharp claws, and the beginnings of a very pointy beak, but fortunately for us, she hasn't quite learned how to use them yet. In fact, of the ospreys we handled spent at least as much time biting their own wings as they did people's fingers.

She was subsequently banded,



stuffed head-first into a plastic bag,



and weighed:



This is a different nest, but this is roughly how she felt about it:


(this nest is also currently featured on the Osprey Cam at the bottom of the Patuxent River Park page, although they may get bumped for the much younger nest across the channel if they get their microwave camera working again. Tune in tomorrow morning & maybe you'll see their parents bring them a large gold carp...)

Here is a two week old osprey, looking miserable, and demonstrating their double-jointed wing design:



Also, having apparently not had enough of southern Maryland this morning, we I have last-minute decided that we're going to go down and spend the weekend at Point Lookout State Park (with a possible trip to St Mary's City, of which I have heard so much about from archaeologists) so as to be there for the turtle release on Sunday. The park's website also has rumors about costumed "ghosts" from the civil war prison wandering about on Saturday night.

Comments

[tam_nonlinear]

stuffed head-first into a plastic bag

And charged with contempt of court!

Seriously neat post, thank you for sharing the pictures.

[jazzfish]

And charged with contempt of court!

ha! That was my first thought as well. (Also sat on.)

And they are rather amazing pictures.

edit: recaptured runaway italics

[ivy]

Grumpy osprey photos totally made my night! I showed them to Saan and she liked them too!

[heuchera.livejournal.com]

Very cool. Oddly enough we were talking about ospreys yesterday while running (I have no idea why). Poor grumpy ospreys, I hope they get tasty carp and cheer up.

[laeticiav.livejournal.com]

OMG, how awesome are those birds? I love that last photo! How fantastic getting to see them up close.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Just because you think it's cute doesn't mean it wants to be picked up and played with! :) I'm still hugely amused by the cranky little things trying to bite people and getting their own wing bones instead, though I sadly didn't get any pictures of that.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

They'd gone back to being hot and maybe hungry by the time we went back past the nest, so I'm pretty sure it was a temporary problem. The guide was full of all sorts of interesting statistics, too, so should you wish to discuss ospreys again in future, I can contribute all kinds of odd factoids.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Indeed! The guy who does the banding started at the park about thirty years ago, just before they banned DDT, and at the time there was one pair nesting there. Since then they've made a come-back, and with about 45 nesting platforms they've got perhaps half that number of successful nests that you can get a boat to to band the chicks, so he started bringing out groups to share the up close & personal osprey experience.