My Annual Pilgrimage to see the Ospreys at Rutland Water - Part 2

7th July 2017

As I said in my previous post Maya and 33 produced four chicks, but unfortunately two had died. The good news was that the remaining two were doing well and in fact one had already fledged. When I arrived at the visitor centre the second chick was still in the nest, but by the time it had taken me the 20 minutes to walk to the hide it had also fledged. That was welcome news as I now had four birds to photograph in and around the nest and in flight.

The adults normally only fly when they are fishing, but for the young birds it was great to fly just for fun and to practice.

Nice to see so much activity.

For some reason the adults were still bringing in sticks to the nest.

And this younsgter obviously needed more practice at landing, especially when attempting to land on a small perch which already held two birds. The secret here is to count the wings and divide by two.

Once in the air they are so majestic on their almost 6 feet wingspan.

The yound birds are easy to pick out with their marbled back compared to the plain dark brown of the adults.

One of the adults kept diving into the water close to the nest instead of disappearing down the reservoir as usual, and it soon became apparent by its splashing around before taking off that it was not fishing, but bathing. It did, however, provide some great opportunities for some shots.

WOW!!! Certainly my best visit ever and it took me a long while to sort through the 1500 images that I took, especially as a higher than normal percentage were worthy of a second look. Well, that's enough for this year but...........I'LL BE BACK!!!!!!