First Osprey!

I spotted, and was lucky enough to photograph, my first Osprey of the season this morning while birding at the Dallas City Park.  In fact, it’s the first Osprey to be reported to e-Bird for Polk or Marion Counties for the year. If you look closely you can see that she has a fish in her talon which she is busy tearing apart. Osprey winter as far south as South America and normally arrive back in the Willamette Valley mid-March for the summer, so this one is right on schedule.  However finding her in the Dallas City Park was not what I would have predicted.  Although Rickreall Creek flows through the park, the creek is tightly packed with trees, and at the present is running high and murky, making spotting a fish very unlikely.  My best guess is that the Osprey must have caught the fish out of some nearby pond and flown to the trees along the creek to enjoy her catch. Later in the season she will be packing her catch off to a nest to feed her young ones.