Pringle Falls osprey

 Watching the osprey nest has been quite an experience. We cheered them on all day yesterday, but in spite of Big Brother flapping his wings a few times, by nightfall both young ones were still nest-bound. This morning the adults were still bringing in fish, then after breakfast they seemed to be ignoring the children. Then, suddenly, with no adults around, Big Brother left the nest and flew to a snag just a few yards away. He perched there for a few minutes, tottering back and forth and looking down at the ground as if to say "How did that happen? And what do I do now?"

Then he flew back to the nest. A few minutes later he flew over the river and back, then looped around in huge circles above the nest. It was an amazing thing to watch!

Having no idea how an osprey "thinks" one can only guess at the sensation of suddenly taking flight. Apparently the adults were actually watching the nest all day, because as son as he came back from this first real flight one of them arrived with a fish for him. Talk about positive reinforcement! Now will come the fishing lessons I suppose.

This morning both young birds were back in the nest, with the smaller one still hunkered down and not seeming the least bit interested in flying. With the bigger one back, and looking quite large now that the wings are really in use, the nest is looking quite crowded. We'll be here a few more days, so perhaps we'll be lucky enough to see "Little Sister" try her (it's?) wings too. That's one of the advantages of staying in one camp for an extended period of time. You see things you never would have seen with only a one or two night stop.
Lots more photos in the album here.

We came up with so many questions as we watched the nest that I located a bit of information on the osprey.
Osprey eggs do not hatch all at once, but instead the first chick hatches out up to five days before the last one. This helps explain why one of the young is so much stronger than the other [and we have no idea of the gender of any of them, but we had to call them something!] The older chick dominates its younger siblings, and can monopolize the food brought by the parents. If food is abundant, little aggression is seen amongst the chicks, but if food is limited, the younger chicks often starve. I don't think there's a food shortage here, seeing how many fish they brought in yesterday, so no telling how the third young one ended up out of the nest.

If you are interested there's more info here at Osprey World