Soaring High With the Ospreys...

  With the sun shining and the winds calm, I was truly tempted to toss down the rakes and shovels and escape to the woods.  My brain needs the comforting that only Mother Nature can bring.   I used some willpower, however, and stuck with the yard work.  If I ever want to finish this project, I cannot keep getting distracted.

  Since I could not go to nature, it came to me!  The usual birds were in the feeders and several doves were on the ground picking up dropped seeds but overhead a single osprey kept a constant vigil.  I am thinking this is the male of a breeding pair that was courting two weeks ago.  Then, he did the full fish dance while she sat screaming in the top of a pine tree.  He would soar to great heights then start dropping.  Drop, hover, drop, hover...all the while with his feet dangling loosely below him was the show for the day.  Then, off he went to catch a mullet to present to his ladylove.  She accepted and that was that.  Now, the pair have a nest in the back of the Bayou and she is actively incubating the eggs.  Since that is time-consuming, he does all of the hunting.  Each day, he spends the time over the water in search of, not only his food, but hers, as well.  He will defend her and the nest fiercely against all predators and make sure she is safe.  This year, they have nested nearly a month early due to the warmer weather.  Hopefully, all will go well.

  Today, this fine bird hovered over the area of the yard where I was working.  He stayed there for quite some time before venturing back out over the water.  I would stop occasionally and dream about soaring (or gallivanting off for a hike!) with my friend, the osprey.  If only I was not so committed to getting this cleanup done!  Oh, well.  Tomorrow may find things a bit easier and I can, at least, head back to the creek bed and collect the thoughts.  The brain works better back there.  Thanks for visiting, Friend Osprey.  You made my day much better!

How I Wish I Could Fly!

  Wouldn't it be the grandest thing to be able to take off in flight under your own power?  Just imagine if we had wings and could soar across the horizon!  Well, perhaps I would not be doing a lot of soaring as I prefer to have good solid ground beneath my feet.  While I am not particularly afraid of heights, I like to be..ahem...well-grounded. It is definitely not being high up that scares me...it is more the falling that causes me to get jittery!  (heehee!) Falling and hitting the ground is not on my list of fun things.  It would, however, be positively wonderful to have wings as a backup means of transportation even if that need for transportation is just to get me back to the ground.

  Out behind the shed, there is a dead pine tree that serves as a roosting spot for so many birds.  The ospreys especially like the tree since it is devoid of needles that have a tendency of getting in the line of view when they are scouting fish.  The tree has started leaning at a precarious angle causing all stubs of limbs to also tilt at weird angles.  An osprey decided to perch itself on one of these slanting broken limbs.  As I photographed the bird, I pondered just how uncomfortable that spot would be for me.  My fear of falling would have had me clinging to that tree like cat hair to a sweater!  

  Birds do not have this problem since they can just swoop off the tree and glide to another spot.  Still, that perching spot did look as if the bird used poor judgement.  I cannot imagine sitting at a tilt for any length of time and yet, that bird stayed there for hours.  I would have been frozen with fear!