Osprey Nest Building On Easter Sunday

We were on the beach surf fishing Easter morning feeding the fish a lot of sand fleas, well before dark. The sunrise was gorgeous as all Delaware sunrises are at the beach, unique and beautiful. Not long after the sun rose, the dolphins showed up and the fish stopped stealing our bait. That’s when this osprey swooped in through the dune break about six feet off the deck in a dive, fifty feet from the truck. “Hey that opsrey is coming in hot and hard” …

The osprey was picking up pieces of reeds and sticks to work on its nest somewhere in the dunes or across route 1 on the Rehoboth Bay. This was some national Geographic entertainment. Since the fishing shut down thanks to flipper and his fifty friends. We got to watch a show while waited for any hungry fish to hit the rebaited hooks.

The first run by the osprey, it dove in and scooped up some reeds and small sticks. These were quickly lost and the osprey had to make another run.
Watching an osprey come in to scoop up a stick is much like them diving in for fish. They come in talons forward and scoop as they swing or lift upwards. This one would line up on a target and nail it every time.
I’ve been trying to get a pictures of this process for a long time. Easter Sunday I got to see it a dozen times. Not fifty feet from the truck.

The second scoop was successful. Some of these “grabs” were a surprise. One reed the osprey pulled was mostly buried in the sand. The osprey ripped it out of the sand and took off.

The last stick it snatched up turned out to be a tree branch or a small dead sapling. In the opsrey’s claws it looked like a giant tree as it flew over the dunes.
Watching it line up to snatch sticks and reeds along the dunes was a lot of fun. Then flipper and his friends stirred up the fish even more and we didn’t have a bite for an hour. Time to pack it up and head home for breakfast. We were out of granola bars and bananas.

Sunrise Easter Morning