Osprey Fish miss

I have been grounded for the last week due to an operation to restructure the toes and bones of my left foot which is a bit frustrating,  It is healing well enough for me to out and about some time next week but in the mean time I have been culling and filing my recent work and found a few more Osprey shots that I thought were worth posting.


A mature Osprey flies across open water looking for trout in the shallower waters.

It ignores another Osprey perched in a high tree and carries on hunting for fish

As seen here Osprey often stall their flight and briefly hover to watch their prey

This attempt to take a fish without landing failed but leaves the bird with dry flight feather to enable it to circle around while gaining height to make a second dive.

These Trout take a bit of catching and the Ospreys second dive also failed and the bird gained height once more and moved off back in the direction it had come from.

Osprey Fishing

This Osprey which has just recently returned from West Africa is still hungry from the effort of its long flight

It circles the Hayle estuary passing right over head while on the lookout for some good fishing and it almost stops and hovers whenever it sees a likely fish.

It eventually swoops down in a steep dive and snatched a large Mullet that must have been almost equal to its own body weight and drags it up from the water in its powerful talons.

When the writhing fish is secured by both sets of talons in a classic front to rear formation the bird eventually flies off into a distant treeline to devour its fine catch which will help to rebuild its energy levels for its final ongoing flight to North Wales or Scotland to join other breeding birds.

I felt privileged and very pleased at having the opportunity to watch and capture this Osprey behaviour today as it is a fairly rare seasonal occurrence down here in Cornwall.

Osprey Dawn to Dusk

I returned to Point Quay at dawn this morning hoping for early Osprey fishing action.   Well I did eventually get some when the first bird showed up from the north on the full tide but it was well after sunrise.

The bird went straight into fishing mode and after a couple of failed attempts it thundered into the water sending up a massive spray and hooked into a decent sized mullet for its efforts.

Its a bit special to watch these birds defy gravity and the drag or the water while exiting with their lively prey,

Once clear of the water the bird heads for the far bank tree line to devour it prey but one of the problems with weekends is that the creek becomes busier with local boat traffic and this bird was not prepared to put up with the disturbance and it very soon flew off heading back in the northerly direction that it had come from but this time with a fish still firmly grasped in its talons.

I returned again later in the day when the boat traffic had diminished and I was pleased to see another Osprey already present and feeding on a fish on an island post in the middle of the creek.

This Osprey was being harassed as well but this time the problem was a more natural one by way of Raven that had its eye on the Ospreys fish but it just ignored the Raven and carried on feeding,

With this Osprey currently feeding it didn't look like I was going to achieve any more fishing shots so I decided to have another go at take-off and landing sequences if the opportunity arose

Heading towards late afternoon this second Osprey decided to have a bit of a go at fishing in the shallow margins near the post by wading along which was a bit surprising but this behaviour agitated one of the local Herons that actually managed to send the Osprey on its way which gave me an opportunity to capture the take-off sequence below.

The Osprey appeared to give up on this unusual method of fishing and returned once again to the same post and this time I captured a nice little landing sequence to finish my day.

Osprey Fishing

During  the last couple of years the migrating Osprey that stop over on the Fal estuary to build up their energy levels predating on the rivers shoals of mullet have become high on my Photography hit list.

What could be more rewarding than to capture images of these magnificent birds plunging into the water taking fish on the incoming tide while sending spray several metres into the air with the force of their impact into the creek.

The estuary is 6 -700m wide around Devoran and the birds obviously favour roosting and devouring their prey on the less populated tree lined south side of the creek which makes for challenging photography until the birds start fishing which tends to be towards the centre.

The first two images were taken during the couple of hours that I waited for a fishing sequence this morning,  I was using a Nikon F4 500mm lens with a 1.7 tele-converter added to achieve a focal length of 850mm but quality is poor and the birds to small in the frame for anything but illustrations

When the bird eventually took off I snapped away throughout their flight but I tend to settle for using the closer images as shown below taken from around the two to three hundred metre mark,  The first flight proved unsuccessful with several aborted dives so it was back to the waiting game for another hour when the bird tried again while giving me a second bite of the cherry as well.

When Osprey hit the water the impact is very dramatic and the bird is often totally submerged for a few seconds.

As they surface the battle begins to get wet plumage and in this particular case a two pound Mullet away from the drag of the water and airborne creating a wonderful wildlife spectacle

Once clear of the water the Osprey turns the fish  'head forward and tail back'  to reduce the wind resistance of the fish to make flight easier and while doing they also produce that classic fish feeding bird of prey image.

But this tale is not quite over for as the Osprey circled around gaining height before flying back to its preferred roost site it was Hassled by a pair of Jackdaw that were after the Mullet for several minutes before it finally managed to shake them off by landing in an alternative Oak tree several hundred metres farther down river.

On landing about half a mile away the Osprey took a rest and firmly locked one talon into the still livly wriggling fish while waiting for it to die before consuming its well earned breakfast,

Four enjoyable hours had passed so quickly and now I was running well late for my breakfast so I headed off home happy to have witnessed this fine bird in action again!!

Osprey fishing

I went back to Devoran Quay yesterday for more fishing behaviour shots,  The juvenile Osprey was still there and fished twice in a couple of hours but on both occasions it hunted an area down river to the east which meant working against the morning sun which tended to create images in silhouette but I was quite pleased with some results posted below when converted to black and white