Club Arnage

Out walking this evening with the family, about 1/2 a mile up the track from our house, and there are a pair of ospreys nesting. We stood and watched them for about 1/2 an hour, until we realised that we can watch at our leisure until October.

According to the RSPB, these are one of 150 breeding pairs in the UK, so we feel really, really lucky.

Bit touchy feely finding-your-feminine-side for Club Arnage innit??

Whatever floats yer boat...  ;D

All birds of prey are so gracefull, particulary the larger varieties.

I love the Osprey, seeing them catch a salmon etc and during flight turning the catch head into wind to streamline it. Bloody wonderfull.

Nothing like that in my neck of the woods. Or I would take up more seriously wildlife photography.

This is my latest attempt ..............

(http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa64/jjkt15/surreal.jpg)

Lighting was natural

There is an Osprey 'so,e kindq bird of prey' pair that nest on a rooftop right in the centre of Manchester - they have chicks at the moment, so you can sit in Cathedral Gardens in your lunch hour watching mom n pop Osprey picking off pigeons to feed the littlies!  Its quite something to see.

F

Edit:  corrected after having it pointed out to me several times that brain was not fully engaged at the time of typing!

Orright! If we are doing birdwatching/welfare stuff I seem to be godfather to a clutch of blackbird eggs that have stopped me trimming my giant Forsythia bush this year... Dammit

However its rather naice to look in unobtrusively at Ma sitting in the nest giving me the baleful eye

We are watching to keep the blarry Magpies away, then I will be able to get the blooming bush trimmed back, taken over half the flippin' lawn at the moment. Massive

(The necessary link: another of the local worries for the parent birds is a pair of Sparrowhawks that prowl the local gardens)

leftie, great shot mate, the colour is something else.

i agree great Photo.

Peregines, I think Fran.

Osprey's are essentially fishing eagles, it's hard to imagine them swooping down on the dead fish floating in Salford Quays.

The grace Birds of prey are so good to watch, when the M40 was first opened they introduced a pair of Red kites , it was very successful, the area is full of them now, they used to be great to watch at around dawn, now there are pairs flying around most of the day.
Down here in Dorset we often have a vairity of birds of prey being fought off by the Crows defending their young.

We have a pair of (what I think are ) Sparrow Hawks living in the church at the top of our road, Holloway in London. My girlfriend saw one take a juvenile blackbird in our garden.
My friend has a Harris Hawk

This is the little fella.

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3119/2561540248_073a30942d_o.jpg)

Gary better tell your mate he has put its head on the wrong way round

They'm supposed to face the front

 ;)

gorgeous bird

Aren't birds of prey great!  One day I awoke to find a dead woodpigeon in my back garden.  While I was thinking about doing something with it a hawk (don't know which variety) swooped down and removed said dead pigeon for me thus saving me a job.   8)

Dx

That was very kind of it Doris.  However,  I think it must have flown oner to my place to disembowel it.
It pretty much cleaned up everything apart from the several million feathers.   What a mess.

t.

I luckily live in Florida. We probably have a 150 nesting pairs just in this county. They are such great birds to watch fish. Its absolutely amazing how they snatch the fish right out of the lake with their talons and fly-away with it. We are also lucky enough to have a fair number of hawks and owls in the neighborhood too. Even the Bald Eagle is making a pretty good comeback here.

What part of Florida.I live in St.Petersburg.
We also have lots Ospey and fish eating hawks as well.

What are you planning for 24hrs of LeMans.

A small group of us from Sebring's Turn 10 will be watching the race together
in Alturas Fl.at Shamrock,s place.

In FL we had a webcam on a pair of nesting Bald Eagles which was great to watch, offline now waiting until fall and nesting season again.  Also at Sebring this year there was a nest with a hawk right smack dap in the middle of everything...what a show they had that week!

Amazing, wish we could come over and watch the race this weekend but we played out of town last weekend so will have to have watch from home.

Some fun stuff going on here.  Agreed Raptors are lovely to watch, the original fighter pilots.  Went to a local raptor rehab once and held a Great Horned Owl, obviously had on long thick arm, and hand protection and the sheer power of this bird as it was clutching my extended arm was amazing.  Bald Eagles may be the most beautiful of all, my sister during her tenure in Alaska said there were so many of them in the appropriately named, Eagle Creek area, that they were almost a pest.
Fax

Amazing and F-troop mom,

Sorry I didn't get back to you guys sooner. I live in Southwest Orange County near Dr. Phillips/Windermere. Usually I'm at LeMans but knee surgery has kept me back this year. I used to work for Alex Job Racing in the early - mid nineties and drove my own Spec Racer Ford in the SCCA. Since Alex no longer runs ALMS I've had to start pulling for the Flying Lizards. Now I'm too out-of-shape to be fit to drive anymore and work and family obligations have really cut down on my racing time. Are you going to Petite LeMans? Maybe we could get hooked up there.

Thanks for the invite to gather and watch the race. I wish I could've made it. Let's try and get hooked up at Sebring, love the F-troop band concerts,  or Road Atlanta if it all works out.