Rapt About Raptors

I've written once before on this blog about bald eagles, but today I'm focusing on another raptor that is more common in my neighborhood: the osprey, otherwise known as the fish hawk. Brown, with white crowns and chests, these big birds are incubating eggs now, having returned to nests they left last spring.

Nests are commonly built in the notches and crooks of dead trees or on platforms built especially for the ospreys atop tall poles. It's not unusual to see the adults flying down to the ground to pick up dead grass or vines and carrying them up to the nest. These will make a soft lining for the eggs. The outside structure of the nest is made of large sticks, which the ospreys carry in their talons. (They drop quite a few as they try to fly.)

Ospreys, which can have a six-foot wingspan, seem to use the same nest from year to year and just "redecorate" when it's time to start a new family.

I've heard the big birds can live to be 15 years old. Osprey mate for life - with maybe a little hanky-panky on the side - but generally they are loyal companions.

Mostly, ospreys eat fish. On the island where I live, meals are close by and easy to catch, so there are many ospreys. One of the adults of a pair, primarily the male, is the fisherman, providing dinner for his wife while she sits on the eggs. All the while he is out fishing, she hectors him with a loud, repetitive "cheereek."

Although a pelican plunges head-first into the water to catch his dinner, the osprey enters the water feet first, catching prey in his talons. He may be flying high in the air when he spots the fish he and his wife will eat for dinner. As he flies back to the nest, he orients the fish so it's carried headfirst for better aerodynamics. One of our friends observed that the male will then fly past the nest carrying the fish to see if his mate approves. After this display, he flies to another tree or pole where he filets his catch. There usually is a lot of squawking back and forth while this is going on.

Osprey parents are busy tending the eggs for five weeks and then the young chicks for 10 weeks after that. Partly, their care is supposed to assure that a bald eagle will not feast on their treasured babies.

Fledglings may not start their own families for several years. There is much to learn, including how to build one of the huge nests - which can be as big as an old-fashioned wicker laundry basket. One year, we watched some young osprey trying without success to construct a nest; despite many attempts, the sticks wouldn't stay put in the tree-top they had chosen. The next year, they or another pair about the same age, succeeded, but in a tree 100 feet away.