Great Blue Herons

Playing with Osprey Photos

I had a nice sequence of an osprey landing on the osprey nest and decided to make a sort of movement image of it by adding the photos together.  It is far from perfect, but it was a fun learning experience combining a batch of layers.  

Osprey April 8, 2024

After photographing the eclipse, I decided to photograph the neighbor's osprey since I had the longest lens handy and I didn't have to carry it very far .  This year our nest is occupied by a pair of geese.  I prefer the osprey, but unless they object to the geese, there isn't much we can do, but watch the geese.  No little ones yet on either nest.

Eagles in January

 I love watching the bald eagles come to visit the osprey nest.  It is such a privilege to see them.

Bald Eagle Having a Meal

The fish was too small to share with the partner bird!  The left eagle in this photo had just flown down with a fish, nearly hitting it’s partner.  The right eagle actually ducked to avoid getting hit with his/her partner’s wings.  I have some blurry photos of it taken at high speed, but not high enough.  They add to the story a little anyway.  I put them at the end since they aren’t the best photos.

Eagles can be bad flyers sometimes.

Bald Eagle Pair in January 2022

 I love photographing this bald eagle pair in St. Mary's County, MD.  They are at our nearby osprey nest often in winter to look for meals and eat.  It is such a privilege to be able to see them so close.  This time they were probably warning off other birds that wanted their meal.

If you are interested in eagle photos, I have one of my best eagle 8x10 photos for sale at Zazzle.

Bald Eagles were Visiting

When a pair of bald eagles came to visit, they separated and one sat on the post while the other used the osprey nest.  To try to turn the photo into one subject, I waited till they were looking at each other, or at least showed some animation.

Oops, careful there.  Don’t fall off!

That’s better.

Bald Eagle Pair Visits

 Say What?

What are you doing?

I’ll look this way, you take that way.

Interesting facts:  Eagles mate for life.  Although they are fierce raptors, they make a cute little “cheep cheep” to communicate.

The Osprey are Back at their Nest

You check your way, I’ll check mine

Making himself (or herself) heard

Nest visitors 2021

I am wondering if these are the geese who lived on the osprey nest last year.  Probably not.   They looked quite cozy.  They were with a flock and didn’t stay.  Other geese have visited as well as eagles.  (The osprey arrive from the south around mid-March.)

The Osprey are Back! June 2020

The osprey have their nest back, after demolishing the nest and removing the geese, but I don't see any signs of juveniles.  I suspect they have another nest in the trees and use this one for fishing.

Camera Club Winners

Here are my latest winning photos in the Advanced Digital St. Mary's County Camera Club Competition for February.  

     Bald Eagle Pair 2 1st place taken12/15

    Skyline Trail 3rd place taken 10/21/15

Winning photos from January competition

I won two honors in this month's competition:

Third prize for my eagle pair photo in the advanced competition.

And honorable mention for the Theme competition called Sleep, for a photo of Santa sleeping.  Photographing animals and people sleeping is not a favorite subject for me because I usually like to see the eyes open, like the old saying, "the eyes are the windows to the soul."  I usually toss the photos with closed eyes.  

Sorry Santa, but I preferred this owl photo I entered.  It didn't win anything.  Owls have 3 eyelids, so it is not surprising to catch them with their eyes closed.

The eagles are back!

It doesn't take very long for the bald eagles and great blue herons to visit after the osprey fly south.

This pair of eagles was sharing a meal. They tend to mate for life, just like swans, turtle doves, gibbons, black vultures and wolves, to name a few.

     Great blue heron

The Osprey Pair

As I showed on March 16th, the ospreys are back on their nests.  I saw 2 on my way home yesterday along route 5. 

Here are a few shots of this year's osprey pair.  They generally mate for life and often return to the same location, so I don't know if this is a new pair or not.  You may recall that our male osprey died last year, and might have been killed by another bird.

They have already had one argument with the neighboring osprey, according to Jim.  

The Osprey are Back

The osprey come back each year to our creek between about March 10-15 every year.  I wish my internal clock was that good!  We've got 1/2 of the pair so far.  I've never seen a pair arrive together.

We believe the female last year lost it's mate, so we don't know what to expect.  (See August 5, 2014 blog)  A new pair?  The baby female and a mate?

Photographed on March 16th

A Pair of Bald Eagles

We are fortunate to have some visiting bald eagles in the winter.  We had a pair visit over the weekend.  The enjoy sitting on the osprey nest to look around, occasionally bringing some food.  This time they didn't move around too much, but I can't resist taking their picture anyway.