Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 23:05:43 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Leslie Roslund Subject: Osprey doing some recreational swimming MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Earlier this week the pair of Osprey loitering around our platform on Leeds Creek treated my wife to a viewing of the following: Very close to noon on Monday, she heard a splash in the water below the Osprey platform, saw that both male and female were in the water, and with her 8x42 binocs watched what appeared to be a recreational swim. The two birds faced one another in the water, and had wings outstreached, heads above the surface, and some of the shoulders also. Wing tips were very close to touching throughout the swim. It appeared that they may have had talons at least touching if not actually holding on to each other. In this position, they remained in the water for at least three minutes (she timed them). While floating along, they performed a forward and backward swaying motion - with first one of them leaning far backward and the other coming forward, then reversing that pattern. This pattern was repeated several times. They seemed perfectly happy in the water. The water was quite choppy; it was a cloudy, cool day, with light rain, though it was not raining at the time of the swim. During the three minutes, the two birds gently floated a distance of about 90 feet - from beneath the platform to a position beyond our pier. At the end of their swim, both birds emerged gracefully from the water - and one flew off in one direction, the other went the opposite way. We would be interested in hearing if others have either seen or read about similar behavior. We also may note that these two birds seem much more intent on lolly-gagging around rather than building a nest and getting on with business. They did not get brooding underway until May 15th last year, and have done precious little on their nest this year - and it is getting late again. Enough of this! Les and Carolyn Roslund Lroslund@bluecrab.org Easton, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================