An Osprey Story

 This morning we stopped by the Osprey nest in the former Willamette Mill Site off of South Main Street here in Dallas.  This photo has a complete story to tell. But first some background.  In general, it has been a hard year for Ospreys. Perhaps the late winter snows in Northern California delayed their arrival, and then they were greeted with more cold and wet weather with their arrival in late March and early April.  Jeanette and I keep a somewhat informal inventory of 10 different Osprey nest here in Polk County.   Two of them are important enough to have remote cameras located at their nests. Both of them have failed this year, that is to say, they do not have a pair of Osprey using the nest site. For one of them, the nest at the Independence Riverview Park, this is the third year in a row it has failed. The remaining 8 nest sights may or may not be successful, with the exception of this nest in Dallas. I am now very optimistic that the Dallas nest is coming right along.  

Now back to what this photo tells us.  The larger bird in the back has just flown in, and because of the "necklace", we know that she is a female. The smaller bird down in the nest is the male.  And because Osprey share the job of setting of the eggs, we can assume that he is shown here taking his turn on the eggs.  They both look a little perturbed. Perhaps he does not want to leave the nest yet, and maybe she is irritated and wants her turn back. Just after this photo was taken, she flew off, and then minutes later returned with a stick.  Did she go furniture shopping? Will she be adding something improvement to the nest? 

Anyway, we are excited to see that it looks like we have a success story going on for this nest here in Dallas, particularly in light of all the struggle going on with the other Osprey nests.