Mike Powell

It has been almost a month since I last checked in on the Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Last month they were busy collecting materials to build or repair their nests. Last Friday I spotted several nests that had grown considerably in size and the ospreys in the nests appeared to be sitting on their eggs.

I captured this image when one of the sitting ospreys had lifted her head to the sky, looking with hopeful expectation for her mate to return. Maybe he would be bringing her a fresh fish or perhaps he would be spelling her a bit from her maternal duties or could it be that she simply longer for his presence.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Sometimes Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) will renovate preexisting nests, but often they have to build one from scratch. This osprey couple that I spotted recently at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge was trying to build one in what seemed to be a rather precarious location.

I learned about the location of the nest only when I spotted an osprey flying by me with a stick in its talons. In my zeal to track the osprey, I neglected to pull back on my zoom lens, so I ended up cutting off its wing tips in the first image in which the osprey is delivering the stick. In the second image, you can see the nest-to-be as the osprey attempts to arrange the sticks. The final shot shows the osprey arriving at the nesting site with another stick. I like the way that the osprey almost hovered in order to land softly with its delivery.

I don’t know it the osprey couple will manage to jam enough sticks in the crook of the tree to be able to form a stable nest, but I will be sure to check their progress in future visits, as long as the wildlife refuge continues to stay open.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Even though we were at more than an acceptable social distance, this Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) seemed to be communicating a message to me with its direct eye contact on Saturday at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge—something like, “Please leave so I can continue working on my nest.”

Most of the time I will try to avoid photographing a bird head-on, because it has the potential to distort its features a lot. With this osprey, though, I think it worked out pretty well, perhaps because of the size and shape of its head.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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When it comes to choosing a nesting site, Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge seem to be opportunistic. Some lucky couples are able to snag pre-existing nesting sites that require only minor improvements, while others are forced to build entirely new nests.

This past Thursday I photographed a nest that is annually built on top of one of the duck hunting blinds in the waters off of the wildlife refuge. Earlier in the season, the ospreys would fly away as I walked by on a trail, but now that the trees are leafing out, the ospreys have a bit more privacy.

The nest in the second image is a new nest, built in the last couple of weeks and probably still under construction. It is adjacent to the location where the nest in the third shot used to be. For reasons that are not clear to me, that nesting platform has disappeared and only a part of the post remains. I believe that the new nest may have been built by  the couple that occupied that nesting platform earlier in the season.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Most Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge are busily building nests high in the trees, but at least one chose a location that is almost at eye level. The nesting site is on top of a duck blind not far from the shore. The blind is essentially a small wooden shack that sticks out of the water on stilts or pilings.

The nice thing about seeing a subject at eye level is that it gives a very natural perspective that helps you, I believe, to engage more directly with that subject, literally seeing eye-to-eye. That is why it is usually recommended that you bend down to photograph children and pets.

In theory, it is easier to get a shot like this that to shoot upwards into a mass of foliage. In reality, though, I had to find a big enough break in the vegetation and shoot over a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, while moving stealthily so as not to disturb the skittish sitting osprey. I ended up stopping by the spot multiple times during the day before I finally got a shot that I liked. (For what it’s worth, I am not sure what the object in the foreground is—at first I thought it was a partially eaten fish, but now I don’t think that is the case. Any ideas?

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Like many other places, Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge has some raised platforms on which ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) build nests each year. Sometimes violent winter weather destroys much of a previous year’s nest, but quite often the nest survives pretty much intact and all that is required is some spring cleaning and minor renovation.

The latter seemed to be the case with one of the osprey nests that I spotted this past Monday. An osprey was in the nest and appeared to be moving around some of the branches. In the first shot you can see some of the man-made elements of the platform on which the nest is constructed and get a sense of the relative size of the nest. I couldn’t get a really good look at precisely was it doing, though, because the nest was high in the air on a tall post, as you can see in the second photo below.

As I was watching the osprey, a bald eagle flew by and seemed to startle the osprey. The final shot captured the osprey just after it took off from the nest and really emphasized the massive wingspan of the osprey.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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