Osprey Feeding on a Fish

8 years ago
5.9K

Occurred on September 9, 2015 / Greenport, New York, USA

Info From Licensor: "I recorded this beautiful raptor in September of 2015, using my old, but trusty Panasonic FZ35. The footage was shot in HD at 720p "only" (camera limitation).

It was very windy that day, and I was about 40 meters away from the bird when I started recording it. Using the full optical zoom of the camera (18X) at all times, I managed to get to about 10 meters (last segment of video) without the osprey minding me too much. The idea is to be sneaky :)

One of my wishes is to be able to record an osprey in flight as it catches a fish. That will be a challenge!
Some observations:

At 00:00mn: a second osprey can be seen in the background, also eating a fish. It's the mate of the one being recorded (both lived in the same nest at the time of the recording).
At 00:53mn: jealous seagull in background (hungry).
At 01:05mn: the amazing talons of the osprey are now more visible as I get closer to it.
At 01:14mn: osprey almost loses grip on fish, but nothing gets lost when you got claws like that. Fish appears to be a bluefish, and a good size one. Not 100% sure.
At 01:44mn: I get the closest possible and I am now almost facing the bird directly, at about 10 meters. Never before have I been this close to an osprey without scaring it away.
At 01:48mn: osprey relieves itself." - Benyoucef Hebboul

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