The Lady wears a Necklace!

My hike to the pier was postponed today as I tackled undecorating the house.  All of the Christmas decorations are down, packed and ready to be stowed away for another year.  For some reason, I feel a huge sense of relief.  Not that I despise the holidays but I am ready to get busy crafting.  Still, the lack of a hike made for a lack of photographs and a lack of a daily topic.  I turned to some of my older photographs for inspiration.  I found so many pictures of years past that I almost lost track of time!  Then one picture stood out from the rest.  Ahhh, there is my inspiration!  The ospreys have long been one of my favorite birds on the Bayou.  They are incredible fishers.  They dive with their feet outstretched.  This is a technique to sight the fish.  The osprey will use its keen vision lined up with their talons and the fish below.  It can be compared to using a sight on a rifle.

As I looked at a few of my photographs, I started thinking that not many folks realize that it is relatively easy to determine male and female ospreys.  The male has a snowy white throat while the female has the same but wears a  "necklace" of dark feathers dotting her throat.   These markings makes it easy to determine if you have a mating pair or just a few juveniles that still have not learned enough to hunt solo.

I can sit for hours watching the ospreys hunt.  In the spring and summer when they have hungry young, it is a full time job.  Both parents hunt and feed the young.  The birds are highly adept at fishing and also toting their catch back to the nest.  Besides the fierce talons, they have barbed pads on the bottoms of their feet.  This helps to keep a slippery fish from wiggling right out of their grasp! Our osprey population has surged since Hurricane Katrina.  It is not unusual to see a dozen or so fishing in the Bay and around the Bayou.  Several pairs nest in the tall, dead pines deep in the creek.  I would love to have build a nesting platform nearer the house.  It would definitely be interesting to watch!