Wednesday, November 05, 2014

How To Land With A Fish In Your Hand

The first thing you do when you catch a fat pinfish is head for the water tower ... you know, where the other ospreys hang out.
Swoop and circle a few times to get them going. Let 'em see who's da bird.

Now for the landing.
You don't want to flub the landing after you just teased everyone and got them looking at you.
Focus on the task at hand.
You're going to be landing on a slick metal rail, with a fish in your slippery fish slimed talons.

Tail flaps down on approach... steady, easy does it .

Release left talons from pinfish!
Check!
Wing flaps down!
Check!
Extend left talons for docking!
Check!

Lock left talons on rail, full stop!
Check!

Initial docking procedure complete.
The osprey has landed.

Fold and stow wings.

Enjoy fish dinner while ignoring the noise from the cheap seats.

3 comments:

Marilyn Kircus said...

Thank that osprey - great instructions for when I get wings and want to hand catch my fish. Thank you too for translating and taking pictures of the demonstration.

Julie Zickefoose said...

Way to go Osprey! You make me think about how tough that must have been! Way to put yourself in the bird's head, FC. Even though you were at Mission Control.

I have a photo series from Tybee (yes, that Tybee) of an osprey landing with two fish, one in each fist. I was shooting away wondering why it was circling and circling, calling in a disconcerted way. But I was too far away to see that it had two, and perceive the problem. Then a fish suddenly flipped out into the sky. I thought he'd dropped it, not realizing he'd had two all along! It was awesome.

Ava said...

That was awesome!