Hello Readers of my Blog,  Been a long time,  what ya been up to?

Its been a couple of years since I had a boat or kayak to navigate the Kensington metro park waters, I sold my seadoo this spring that I used for bird photography on lake Erie and bought  a brand new boat a Scout inflatable with 4hp mercury motor here is a picture of me my Friend Rich took unknowingly and shared it with me, this was my maiden voyage a few weeks ago,  I have since been to the osprey nest 5 times now this season

Some of you longtime followers of my photography here on the blog might remember my previous writings on this osprey nest of when Fred and Wilma had a couple great seasons of raising osprey kids.   This year the osprey couple which I don't know if they have names yet as I'm not a local photographer who is here all the time,  I don't get up to this park a lot any more as my m-f job involves driving a semi every day and I just hate to drive on Michigan roads so I don't like driving up here too often.  Anyway, I found that I miss photographing this nest and being in this lake, some of the most peaceful wildlife moments have been kayaking to these ospreys. I love watching animal behaviour and learning species and how they go about raising there offsprings.

I've learned a lot watching ospreys and the dynamics and roles of the parents and watching the osprey kids and their curious eyes once they learn to fly and understand later in the summer all of the things they saw their parents do all summer is something they have to do at the end of August and early Sept when they just leave and fly south for the winter leaving them all alone and they will have to make those dives into the water to snag those fish.

Saturday 7-13-24 Making Ospreys Great Again,

As soon as I started floating up I took my first photo of the night at 3:53 pm

Dad dropped off what turned out to be a two fish drop off time I was with them

3:58 Dad flew over to the treeline over to my right, I slowly floated in on him as this was the first time floating in on this osprey, wondering if he was gonna be like Fred and be accepting of me

 I sat there with him for what turned out to be a little less than an hour  here is a nice portrait at  4:04pm

So as he was napping and preening I started to have a one-way conversation with him, telling him how great of a Dad he was and how monumental it must be to feed not only himself but be the provider for his 4 kids and mate throughout the summer. I told him he was a kickazz dad,  (he agreed :) )

I said I need a name for you, give me some time to think about it.

he said I gotta go and get another fish before it gets too dark, 4:44pm he takes off

After he took off at 4:51  I watched Mom take off from the nest where she was at, it was extremely hot and humid out this day near 90 degree's my R5 was heating up a couple times my overheating warning came on, never turned off but I managed it well  anyways Mom flew and what I noticed was another teaching moment to her kids in the nest, I watched her drag her feat in the water,  jump up high then just plop down in the water to show her kids on how to bath and or cool off when its this hot.  she just sat there made sure she was far enough away from the nest so the kids could see what she was doing.  I also noticed Mom take a run along the treeline and balk at a couple branches to break then broke off a huge azz branch and brought it too the nest I got that in video, I'll stick it below if I can here. but yeah the nest did not need it, she was just showing her kids how to be an adult osprey teaching moment.

Mom coming back to the nest after that dip

A little shake-off in the air on the way back

at 5:56 pm  dad brings in that second fish during my time with them this evening,  what happened in the world at 6:11pm 7-13-24? it is part of this night, more later

maybe my last photo of the complete family here as the kids are all flying right now,  None flew for me this night as they had just started a couple days before according to pics from my fellow photographer friends in the park.

Dad takes off and decides to show off for me, here we go!

Here we go he's flying right at me,  being at the nest for several years I've had this happen a few times from this location I set up at the lake and was hoping it would happen this night.  You line up light and backgrounds and hope a subject fly's into it.  get ready for this sequence as it might be my fav Bird in flight sequence I've photographed to date.  Been at this bird photography for like 14 years, here is a great flyby

I believe it was the male doing a couple things , i'll explain in a bit

I'm leaving this one uncropped as to show you the distance I had from when I started and started to pan to my left as Dad flew by, using my 600f4 prime

One of, if not the best bird in flight pic I've ever taken is in this set of pics, its not this one, althought your thinking WTF as you scroll and see some of these,  haha  I did when I got back home and scrolled through the jpeg previews,   btw all of these pics have tons of edits to the raw files.  tremendous amount of time in these pics and writing this blog so please give it a share if you found any value in it.  I appreciate it  

4 times on this Flight I saw Dad do this Drag his talons, yep 4 different times I saw him drag his feet climb up a few inches then do it again showing off for me I hope his new friend and showing his kids some of his mastering and powerful flying skills.  

You can Click on any of these pics and it will take you to my flick site if you want to see the full res uploads on that site. or hold Ctrl + on your keyboard to enlarge the screen

This could be my fav but then

But then I saw this one!  What!  the wake from the beak being dragged in the water on purpose, it literally felt like Dad was showing off for me or his kids,  this was like a planned portrait shoot with Dad,  he was like WATCH THIS FLYBY!  and proceeded to do 4 360 basketball dunks for me. haha  but yeah Top 5 if not top 2 ever Bird in flight shots me here,  just an action, dynamic, landscape with a sense of wow its telling me.  this whole flight by me had me in awe of the power and grace of his flying here.

at 5:57 pm I'll leave this last photo of this flight , more can be seen on my flickr site, I left out a few,  my old R5 at 12 fps mechanical shutter did great here, never hit the buffer in the some 50 shots I took on this flight. Looking forward to the 30fps 14 bit raw files on the new R5II I preordered though.

So after that flight by Dad I knew all the effort to get there that day paid off,  The new Boat I was hesitant about buying paid off when I saw these pics unfold.  I bought myself a Zoom lense with the boat, thats the way I've always looked at it with being on the water over the years.  

At 6:41pm I took my final shot of the night, floated around to the other side to see if there were any comps mom and the 4 kids in the nest,  did'nt spend to much time here maybe a couple minutes, I thought the kids are'nt flying  I had some keepers for the night.

Here is a 1 minute clip of my time with Don before the flight and Mom dragging that log into the nest.

I loaded up the Boat and was driving out of the boat launch and My Dad called me and asked me if I had seen the news? I said no.  He said Trump has been shot!  Went into detail on what he was watching on TV with the news. all the way home I was listening to the radio trying to figure out what was happening. 

I thought Don!  I shall name the male Osprey Don (Donald)  After the greatest President this country has seen Since Reagan.  The Democratic far left have finally did it, they tried to Kill off Trump,  I tell you these are the facts. Power and money and a willing far left Media to push and ignore actual real news will get a Republican president shot.  Lone wolf or an Ordered hit by the left,  EVERYTHING in life is taught and that pos 20 year old kid was taught to hate a man that absolutely loves our country and literally did everything right to make America great again. They came within an inch of destroying many lives that night,  borders, Language and Culture is what America was and is founded on.  not a political message, it is actual fact.

Hope you enjoy the pretty ospreys above. Osprey Donald I thank you! Wish I had unlimited time to take photo's  For me life seems to get in the way of this hobby more and more as I get older, hope to make that tide turn someday if we make it.   sometimes its a inch away

Fight Fight Fight!