Hi everyone it's Lily again, I work with the US Forest Service here in the Columbia
River Gorge National Scenic Area and welcome to Osprey Watch part 5. So this is the, I think,
the finale! It's been about two and a half to three weeks since we last saw the babies and
as I've been driving by I've been noticing that they are quite large, so let's go take a look!
All right so here we are at the moss nest and as you can see these two birds in the nest are
basically the same size. The bird on the left is the juvenile while the bird on the right is
the adult. At this point the juvenile will be feeding himself, so either catching prey and
eating it, tearing it apart himself or the parents will provide supplementary food. After
the bird has successfully flown a bit and caught some food, they'll start migrating down to South
America or Mexico where the juveniles will spend the first two years of their life down there.
So if you recall this nest had two young babies in it, so I'm thinking that one of them might
be out doing some test hunting or maybe even started to migrate. Sometimes there is a gap
of between a couple days between the babies so that gap could mean the difference between
really knowing how to fly and really knowing how to hunt and still needing parental support.
All right so here we are at the teenage nest and we have three juveniles,
there are two that are inside the nest and one that is eating some lunch up on that platform.
So there was kind of an awkward flight, you can see these these juveniles are still a little
bit awkward. Still learning their balance, their flight techniques but pretty soon just like the
moss nest they will start migrating, fending for themselves and basically on their own.
And that was a successful flight by one of the juveniles, he's coming around the side
and there he went right behind the nest platform.
The parent is the bird that is on the far right side.
Here we have the crow's nest. We've got two juveniles in the nest and again quite large,
fully grown, fending for themselves with maybe a little bit of parental support.
So that behavior that you just saw, that shaking, is called a rouse and birds do that to kind of
get any dirt or grime off their feathers and they also do that when they're comfortable.
You can also kind of hear there's some calling going on.
And we've got another flight!
So we've seen a couple successful flights and these birds are all healthy and fully grown
and they're going to start their own life without their parents really shortly.
So this is a juvenile that just flew out a couple minutes ago from the crow's nest,
he flew back in, didn't bring any fish or anything but came back in and is perching and you can
kind of see that the eyes every once in a while when they turn their head are that kind of dark
red or brown that I mentioned a couple episodes back. And that head bobble that the juvenile is
doing every once in a while is kind of a way of triangulating or focusing in on something.
There he goes, we'll see if he comes back with something he might just be going for a joy flight.
So we've got a turkey vulture flying overhead.
Thank you all so much for watching osprey watch, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I know
that it made my day coming out and checking in on these babies throughout the season. Now if you are
curious about learning how to bird watch, there's a bunch of resources online and the biggest thing
is just getting a guidebook or looking up information on the web, getting a pair of
binoculars and just setting up. The Columbia River Gorge is home to numerous species of birds and
tons of Osprey. So the three nests that we were looking at throughout the season were within about
a one mile stretch of the Columbia River and when we started this journey there were seven babies
and I'm happy to report at the end of the today all seven are happy and healthy! So it's been a
really good season for these Osprey and if you are interested in taking a look at these birds,
the Columbia River Gorge has a number of different recreation sites that get you really great access
to bird watching. So come out, enjoy the birds, enjoy nature and recreate responsibly. Thank you!