An Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) descending for a landing on its nest.
Two Ospreys watching a flock of birds perform aerobatic maneuvers.
All four Osprey nests I watch now have three chicks each. In this photo, one of the chicks sits next to the mother Osprey. The other two chicks are down inside the nest. This is the first year I've seen this Osprey platform occupied. There are now two Osprey nests at this location.
At the salt marsh today, I found two Ospreys busily building a nest. At this particular marsh, up until today, there has only been one nest which right now is occupied by two adults and three chicks.
If you've viewed my last two postings, you know how hard this Osprey was working to get this large branch to the nest it is building. In this photo, the Osprey has gained some altitude but not high enough to drop the branch onto the nest. If you look closely, the Osprey's right claw is completely off the branch and its left claw is just releasing it. When I saw the branch drop, I thought the Osprey lost its grip but I think the branch was just too heavy and the Osprey saw that it wasn't going to get the branch up onto the nest.
This is the hard working Osprey nest builder from my last posting. It has the unwieldy tree branch out of the water and is struggling to gain altitude. The branch may too heavy for the Osprey because it can't get the branch back into a horizontal position.
The Osprey building a nest featured in my last two postings now has another tree branch and is having a tough time keeping it up out of the water.
An Osprey flying in building material for a new nest (see yesterday's posting) drops the tree branch on its new nest.
An Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) waits on the nest for its mate to fly in hopefully with a fish.