The Final Chapter in the Osprey Saga
I finally I saw Junior bring a fish of his own, grasped in his claws, to the nest site. He didn’t eat it in little beak-sized pieces like his mom fed to him, but rather tore at it voraciously, ripping it into pieces too big to swallow that he then had to step on with his foot to rip into pieces small enough to get into his beak and down his throat.
It appears Junior has graduated summa cum laude from Osprey U and is now on his own. At night he sits alone on the platform.
His dad has already left for South America. His mom is still around, but she will leave soon. She sometimes comes and sits on the nest platform alone during the day, sometimes on a nearby piling, reminiscing perhaps. She did bring Junior a fish the other evening but didn’t try to feed him. Just dropped it for him and took off. Moms are something else. They never want their kids to grow up and no longer be dependent on them.
Junior will hang around for a while yet, getting used to his newfound freedom. Then he, too, will leave to face life on his own and make of it what he is able. Thus, the Osprey saga ends for this year. It will all be repeated again next year — if the fates allow.
Thus concludes Michael Koblos’ 26-week saga of the doings of his nearest osprey family. A 78-year-old retired naval officer, Koblos lives in a small cottage on the water, Home Port, in a place called Cobb Island, located in the wide Potomac River about 50 miles south of Washington, D.C.