Junior is getting really big. He’s over half the size of his mother now, and is working his father hard to satisfy his ever-increasing appetite for fish, which his mother still feeds him one bite at a time. He was awkwardly stretching his wings out the other day; it won’t be long now before his mother will have him flapping his wings to develop his flight muscles. In case you wondered, even in hot weather, ospreys don’t need to drink water. They get enough from the fresh fish...

  Olivia is rearranging the furniture again. She’s been tugging and pushing and bringing in new twigs and slowly widening and, at the same time, lowering the edges of the nest in preparation for Junior’s growth and ultimate venture into flying. In the end, the nest will be as flat and broad as she can make it. The feeding goes on, and Junior keeps growing. It takes about eight weeks from hatching to flight, so we have a ways to go before Junior takes to the air. Sometime in mid...

  The other morning, I looked out the window to see Olivia off the nest, sitting on a perch I had nailed to a nearby piling. She was busily preening her feathers. After seven weeks virtually glued to the nest, she had taken on a rumpled and ragged look. I guess she finally felt that the kid(s) could get along without her for a short time while she did some personal grooming without being bothered by her ever-hungry chick(s) clamoring for attention. But she was soon back on the job, trying...

  Week 9: The Season of Sitting Olivia continues her perseverance. Oliver continues his vigilance. He visits her often and sits at her side and brings her fish to eat. Livie stands up every so often to rearrange the eggs so that they are uniformly heated and to stretch her wings. And the long days continue. We had high winds on Sunday. Oliver could not stay on the nest with Olivia, or even on any nearby piling. But Livie stayed scrunched down deep in her nest, not even eating until evening...