The Chase

There is no love lost between sibling osprey.  They have spread out along the river bank and about the only time you see two of them is when one is trying to drive the other out of the area. Would they hurt the other if they had the chance?  I think they would, although up until recently I would often see two of them hanging out on the same branch.  But despite these two appearing to get along, they definitely don't like the third one, which is probably the runt of the litter.

On the other hand, these aerial arguments provide good opportunities for getting interesting shots of osprey flying.  I hope you don't think of me as a competent photographer.  I can blow it just like anyone else.  Yeah, there are some technical settings that you need to be familiar with in using a DSLR, but you can have all the settings right and still blow it.

I blew it in the series.  I don't know what my problem was.  Looking at the images on the camera, I thought everything was okay, but once I got home and looked at them on the computer, almost every one of them was slightly out-of-focus.  These opportunities don't occur that often, so I could have kicked myself.

Depth of field is one reason.  In some, one osprey is in focus; the other is not.  Sometimes there is not enough light (despite how the bright the image may look) to increase depth of field enough to get everything in focus.  In some, the osprey may not be as close to each other as they appear to be.  I am using a long lens and long lens compress distance, making it appear as though subjects are much closer together than they actually are.

How serious are they about doing each other harm?  I think that is indicated by the open talon of the one bird.  It would love to sink it into the other bird.  But there isn't much danger of that.  Anytime one gets close, the lead bird does a quick little turn-around maneuver that immediately creates a lot of distance between them.  In the images where the bird with the open talon is in the lead, this is what has happened.  The bird being pursued executed a quick maneuver and ended up behind the osprey that wants to do harm where it can keep in eye on him.