Over the last few years of walking, exploring and photographing in Scotland, I’ve never gathered up and shared the images of Ospreys that I’ve managed to collect so, I thought I’d start here and share some of the images from my wanderings.
Before moving here, I think I had a chance encounter at Lossiemouth West beach once, carrying a camera as ever but wrong lens for this occasion. That said, a decent shot can be cropped in, right?
July 2019 and the family and I were on one of our regular trips to Lossiemouth, where we kind of hale from, mither is an Elgin “skiter” and I was born in Aberdeen, due to be an awkward so’n’so, apparently.
Just about every time we’re up visiting the folks, we’ll take a run to Lossie, weather permitting, on this day, a walk on the West beach.
We watched this bird fishing just off shore and eventually coming up with a flatty, before heading inland.
Fast forward to 2023 and my regular walks up at Backwater reservoir, the Ospreys start arriving late March into April so, I started getting sightings around then.
April 3rd 2023 on my regular walk up at the reservoir, I finally caught sight of an Osprey …………….way over there!
I know, it’s MILES away but, it was an Osprey! You have to take what you can sometimes š
Better? Not much but, at least you can tell it’s an Osprey?
Once seen …
April 4th, I was back. The reservoir is my favourite walk, I have had some great encounters and photo opportunities up there.
One thing against shooting into the sky, can be the background, a blue sky can be great but when there’s that hint of cloud, you get that whiteout effect that looks awful. There is a way to replace the sky in Photoshop but I try to steer away from doing these things. What you see is as close to what I saw as possible. The bird in that first shot has a blue leg ring on its left leg, if you get to see that ring well enough, you can read the ID on it and identify that bird.
Sometimes, when the bird is pre-occupied with fishing, I get great photo opportunities.
All the same bird, taken in one session as it watched the water and circled almost overhead.
I got a lovely shot on April 20th.
A nice clean shot of a bird with its catch.
May 11th sees my next set of shots at the reservoir again. Once you’ve identified an Osprey in flight, they are quite easy to spot again, they have a lovely slow wing beat and fine wings compared to other raptors.
There have been times when they fly almost directly overhead and it’s difficult not to track them all the way with the camera, I’ve almost ended on my butt a few times.
Directly overhead, my neck hurts just thinking about it š
They all have beautiful eyes, I’m sure he’s checking me out š
That same day was my first sight of an Osprey catching a fish, I missed it of course, but caught a couple of the aftermath.
It’s amazing that they turn the fish to make it more aerodynamic.
May 17th, I got a couple of decent shots, one with a catch.
I love the light coming through the first bird’s wings but the second shot I captioned “If you don’t stop wriggling, you’re going back!” š
Remembered I mentioned replacing the bland sky with another in Photoshop?
May 22nd was one of those white sky days as you can see in the first shot, the second is the same one but with a fake sky added!
July 22nd saw another bird scanning over the reservoir. I personally can’t differentiate between male and female, there are those that can. I also can’t ID any particular bird, without seeing a ring, if it has one.
My final shot of 2023 was on Sept 16th, the Ospreys start heading back to Africa around then.
So there are my first Osprey encounters and those for 2023. I’ll add another page for 2024, I got more interested, had more time or just saw more then.
Scozmo's Photery 