Do Osprey's growl/cackle?

[jeff kushner]

I'm sorry that this is the best pic I can get this year so far. We have a very nervous Mom on the nest. Kerry and I think it may be the same Mom who abandoned her nest in the same location, last year so no one wants to get her upset.

She will begin to call out in the familiar Osprey call we all know here...but if we break the cover of the tree to walk out on the dock, she will "gobble/growl/cackle" rather loudly. She is clear about "Stay the heck away". The other nesting Ospreys never made that sound & I have never heard that sound before from them so it's kind of neat. We estimate her egg(?S) to hatch next week. We watched her for a while as she rolled her eggs, I counted 3 positions to roll from so maybe 3 eggs? We'll see soon I hope.

She might even let us get closer. The pier owner said he hasn't been on his own pier for a month! LOL Good man!


If you catch this Tom ...what is the noise she's making?

 

[Tom]

I have no experience with any of the sea eagles. We can't hunt with them, so no one has any. I've seen osprey migrating through my area out in the desert of all places, but never been up close to one. My Harris hawks have a variety of vocalizations, so it would make sense that the osprey does too. My hawks warn me of canine predators like coyotes in the field, and when they have game pinned in heavy brush, they will call me over to flush it. They also have a squawk to let other hawks know that they are not happy with them, and they do this little peeping noise to talk to me or my wife when we come over to visit them in their mews. It reminds me of Bobo the owl from "Clash of the Titans". Finally, they have an obnoxious squawk to tell me they are hungry and want more food. They make this noise even after they've eaten a huge meal sometimes.

Odd that yours are so nervous, and also odd that babies would be hatching so late in the year. Maybe its because of your more northern climate? There was a nesting pair that I watched daily for a couple of weeks in Georgia on Jekyll island. We were there filming "The Walking Dead". This pair and their babies was on top of a pylon that was only about 10 feet tall with people walking, biking and driving right under them all day every day. It didn't seem to bother them at all. They had a gaggle of hungry babies begging for food.

Most of the raptors and larger birds here, like ravens, hatch mid April or earlier. A falconer friend just grabbed a fledgling kestrel yesterday from a nest that he'd been watching all season. The big owls go even sooner. Great horned owls steal last year's nests from other birds, so they start early in the season before the other birds come back to their nests.

 

[jeff kushner]

Thanks Tom, I did not know that Ospreys cannot be kept by you guys and YES, she's very late and very nervous. Kerry got upset when I said that I didn't think she was going to bring them to fledge but she's crashing and burning at this "mom thing".



I learned while reading that technically a "Fish Eagle" only hunts from the top of the water, while an Osprey will dive in.

 

[Tom]

I learned while reading that technically a "Fish Eagle" only hunts from the top of the water, while an Osprey will dive in.

That's cool. I didn't know that either.

Osprey are kind of classified as their own thing. They aren't hawks, Buteos, and they really aren't eagles either, Aquila. They are in their own genus, Pandeon.

A couple of friends of mine have African fish eagles, but they don't hunt with them, so I only seen them on movie jobs or perched out in weathering mews at their homes. We can't hunt with these types of eagles because they take their prey on the wing and keep going with it. All raptors are trained with positive reinforcement only, which means they come to us for food. When a hawk or eagle catches a rabbit, the prey is too big to fly away with, so they are somewhat "anchored" to the ground where the falconer can run up and interact with them. Fish eagles snatch a fish out of the water and keep flying away with it to the nearest tall tree on the other side of the lake. Then they eat it, fill up, and have no reason and no desire to come back to the falconer.