Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everybody out there! I've been neglecting my posts for a couple of days, but today I got some shots that I knew I had to share. I was at the Quick Point Nature Preserve on Longboat Key here in Sarasota, when I spotted the osprey above perched on an Australian pine. He was bobbing his head up and down repeatedly, trying to get a fix on something in the water. All of a sudden he took off and dove into the water headfirst at full speed. A couple of seconds later he stuck his head back up out of the water, took a deep breath, then spread his wings and took off. And as you can see, he managed to grab a pretty large fish in the interim.


Once airborne, he flew around for a few minutes. I don't know if he was looking for a suitable perch, or if he was waiting for the fish to quit squirming. I caught a couple of shots where he was in just the right spot, illuminated by the setting sun.

Luckily, he decided to land not too far from where all this action started, so I just kept shooting. I'll spare you the gorier shots of the fish being made into dinner, but I will tell you that the osprey started with the eyes, and worked his way down. The fish didn't give up easily, though. The osprey kept having to flap his wings to keep his balance every time the fish started flopping.