Visiting friends for the weekend, and we kayaked over to the western end of the lake where there is an extended marshy area. Lots of Eastern Kingbirds around and a couple of Kingfishers, but the main attraction was a pair of Ospreys.
There is an abandoned nesting platform that was put up for the Ospreys, but the pair of Ospreys has actually built a nest on another platform erected by a road about a kilometer from the lake. They were both perched in a dead pine when we quietly came up on them. One of them launched out over the water and was perhaps thinking about its dinner, when one of the local Caspian Terns arrived and went after it like a homing missile.
A fantastic sequence of swoops and dives and twists and turns followed, both birds calling out at each other (or maybe it was just the Tern calling; it was hard to tell), and the Tern stayed on the tail of that Osprey as if it was on a string! Eventually the Osprey gave up and flapped off across the lake, leaving the Tern to resume its patrol..
The other Osprey, perhaps the contemptuous spouse or even the parent, meanwhile remained quietly on its perch, and took no part in any of this and made no move to challenge the Tern. Perhaps it knew better.
