Splash goes the osprey

August

So an osprey makes a pretty big and loud splash when it hits the water in pursuit of a fish. It’s an entry that would put them on the bottom of the scorer’s list at the Olympics, in terms of form. I recently spent a few days in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and the black-and-white birds would occasionally hover above and dive into a nearby pond and harbor in pursuit of a fish.

The loud splashing sound always caught my attention. Apparently, they are capable of hitting the water at 80 miles an hour in that pursuit.

I never had a camera handy, but here’s a YouTube clip showing such a plunging osprey.

The TJN photo shows an osprey returning to its nest at the Marshlands Conservancy in Rye in 1999.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 5:07 pm by Mike Risinit.
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