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Ospreys are back at Fields Pond. Several nests are in the vicinity, visible from the Wiswell Road in Brewer, and from the “red bridge,” which is not red, on the Brewer Lake Road in Orrington.
Ospreys also are back at a handful of nests along Interstate 95 from Clinton to Augusta, close to the Kennebec River. Many drivers note these nests.
Soon, the female will be sitting on eggs – typically two or three – and the male will bring her fish to eat.
Males and females alike are beautifully adapted to catch fish. They fly over the water, watching for a fish. When the fish is directly underneath, the osprey dives with wings held upward, head out, feet reaching down. It hits the water with a splash, going under the surface. Sometimes only the tips of the wings show. If the osprey is successful, it flies up with a fish in its curved, needle-sharp talons. The undersides of its toes have tiny, sharp spicules that help grip the fish.
The osprey arranges the fish in its talons, head first, and flies to a branch to eat it, or to the nest to feed its mate. I have watched young ospreys, recently off the nest, try to catch fish – and mostly miss. But they gain skill with time.
On an Audubon canoe trip, we saw an osprey overhead, flying fast, carrying a fish and screaming. An eagle was following. As the eagle closed in, the osprey dropped the fish. The eagle grabbed the fish out of the air and flew away with its stolen lunch. I was stunned. Before that, I had considered eagles to be lumbering, slow fliers. No more!
On yet another Audubon canoe trip, we saw an osprey flying over a cattail marsh. Suddenly the osprey turned and dropped into the cattails and came up – not with a fish, but with a red-wing blackbird. Again, I was stunned. It never occurred to me that an osprey would catch anything but a fish. I searched the literature of field ornithology and found a few examples of ospreys’ non-fish prey. One unusual prey item was a cardinal.
For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden, call 989-2591.
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