NX's Location, One Alcoa Osprey Fledged Today

NX has checked in. She is still exploring the Potomac River.

When I first checked in at the Alcoa Osprey nest today, surprise! Only two chicks in the nest. The oldest fledged earlier today. Here we see Mom with two chicks gathered around her because it's chow time:

At one point, a wing enters the frame from the left. The cam operator widens the view and we can see the fledgling perched on a 'branch' just outside the nest. The siblings that have not fledged thought it was fascinating:

The fledgling took advantage of having all that space to itself by doing some stretching:

Then it tried to get everyone's attention:

Did some heavy wingercizing:

And posed like this for a moment:

And I do mean moment. I had to look away for a moment and when I looked back I could see him in the background circling in a clockwise manner. I just had time to hit the s'cap and caught him in the upper right hand corner:

And then he was back in the nest. Yes, it would have been easy to just hop over into the nest, but the big circling flight is much more fun!

Then Mom and the fledgling took off together. The two that were left in the nest didn't seem to know what to make of this. It was kind of comical watching them:

But soon enough, they both came back together. The fledgling came in first and here Mom is just landing on the 'branch':

I think this is the fledgling getting some air:

And then getting some big air, with Mom craning around to watch. This is not a landing or a take-off. This is just wingercizing:

This is the biggest air during wingercizing that I've ever seen at this nest. Ospreys are great at hovering, and that's what he was doing. Look at how intently Mom is watching...

Remember the fledgling was on the 'branch' while Mom was feeding the two siblings? You can see Mom's got a pretty good crop and the chick on either side have pretty good crops. The middle chick is the fledgling, not much of a crop. And he was crying and crying because he was hungry. This is about the time I had to stop watching. But I'm sure he got fed...

I'll finish this post with this nice family picture. Osprey spend so much time preening, it's hard to get them all looking up. As you can see, I've got one of them looking down here, but I still like this s'cap. I took about 50 s'caps today just to try to get the 'moments' without someone's head buried under a wing preening... And trying to avoid having any faces at the smudgy spots on the cam...