Tag: Osprey

wheeling osprey* takes

big largemouth bass home for lunch

others ride thermals

*(coming back to Sanford from Clermont/Montverde on a gopher tortoise location/relocation project Sunday, February 21, 2016, entering the surprisingly swift-moving Interstate Four just South of Orlando and its massive reconfiguration/expansion project, I am rewarded as a passenger the sight of a monster largemouth bass pinioned by the talons of a majestic Osprey in a head-forward posture over the teeming interstate.  These incredible land-albatross are the true fishermen of Florida and have only humans and thieving Bald Eagles to fear for their continuation as a species.  This successful osprey was just a hundred feet or so above the teeming interstate, while others sporting the telltale long, thin knife-edged wings wheeled and danced in the thermals provided by the concrete rivers below. Over Lake Monroe in Sanford some years earlier I was thrilled to see a Bald Eagle behind a similarly successful fish-catching Osprey.  The eagle dropped below the osprey, beat its wings a time or three and then flipped upside down and snatched the freshwater mullet out of the grasp of the osprey and then said eagle zoomed out and away its thievery complete! There is too much out there to be forced to concentrate on traffic all the time!)