The Osprey and the Coyote Just for Fun

We saw the osprey first, perched on a phone pole. This was on our way out to the fishing hole. He is very aware that we were there and was watching us intently. From this perch, he's a short distance from the river and our initial thought was that he had been watching the river for fish. Ospreys are masters at fishing and if he saw one, he'd have swooped down, caught it, and returned to the perch to eat it.

This is the same osprey, but the picture is from the other side of the pole. The distance is a little bit greater, but again, he seems to be watching the river. As we were to learn, initial perceptions can be wrong.

The image is a little dim because of the brightness of the sky. The picture was taken using a cell phone, which automatically dimmed the image as the picture was taken.

This is the first image of the osprey that hinted that it wasn't looking for fish to catch, it had already been fishing. It can barely be seen, but he is holding something down on top of the pole.

In this image, sticking out from the top of the pole, there is the tail of a fish. The osprey confirmed this by taking a couple of bites, while we were watching. Apparently, before we saw him, he had caught a perch fish and was in the process of eating it when we interrupted.

If we zoom in on the previous image, it becomes a little more obvious that the osprey is standing on a fish. It continued eating for a short time, though it kept a close watch on us.

Apparently, the osprey tired of us watching it eat, so it decided to eat out. It flew away with its fish. The image is just good enough to notice two things. First, the fish is missing its head, which the osprey has probably already eaten. Second, the osprey is displaying the way ospreys always carry fish while in flight; head first. It is an amazing thing, but no matter how they catch a fish and which direction a fish is when it is plucked out of the water, ospreys always align it so the fish is carried with the head in front and the tail behind. This helps the bird carry even a wiggling fish that weighs a lot more than the osprey does.

On the way back from fishing and only about a mile from where we saw the osprey, we spotted this little guy, on the other side of the fence that was just off the road. When I say little, I mean it. This coyote is a youngster and was probably born this year. It is quite small yet and is about the size of a fox. My guess is that it was about half of the normal adult size. 

The young coyote was obviously looking for mice and it wasn't being too successful because the coyote was underweight.

This is the coyote from a little closer up. It was nervous by our presence, but not quite scared enough to run away. This one stayed at roughly the same distance from the car the whole time we were watching it. It is hard to describe how cute the coyote was.

This is the closest picture we took of the coyote. The distance is about 40 feet. When this picture was taken, it actually stopped where it was and stood still as if it was posing for us. More likely, it heard a mouse and was momentarily distracted, so it probably took a moment to try to zero in on the sound.

The coyote and the osprey were seen when we went fishing at this spot on the Clark Fork River. We didn't catch any fish, but we really didn't care and my daughter and I just wanted to get out for a short time. It was also quite windy, with the wind moving from the left to the right in this image. This made it difficult to cast with ultra-light gear. This is why the water doesn't have a calm, clear appearance.