On Sunday afternoon we decided to drive to Jolly's in Flesherton. If you're not local, or even if you are, you may not know that Jolly's has a reputation for the biggest and best ice cream, cones around! And they have a wide range of flavours too. I still picture taking our grandson ten years ago, when he got a brilliant blue Bubble Gum cone.
We settled for chocolate and peanut butter in one and pralines and cream for the other, and after a few minutes went on our way. Next stop was the causeway across Lake Eugenia.
Lake Eugenia is a man-made lake, dating back to 1905 when what is now Ontario Hydro built a dam on the Beaver River just above Eugenia Falls, creating the lake. They sold off cottage lots, so now the lake is totally surrounded by cottages. But on the causeway they put up a nesting platform, I'm guessing to stop them using actual hydro poles. We have stopped for years to check it out. The lake is still generating significant electricity.
We crept up slowly, not sure what we were seeing until we got closer, but it certainly appeared that there were two large birds sitting on the enormous next.
There were two young in the nest. They sat quite still even as we got close, and we had a really good look. Unfortunately these photos were taken through the windshield facing directly into the sun and it was quite hazy, so all I really got were silhouettes. They looked large enough that they would soon be learning to fly.
Osprey are fish-eating hawks, so they are found on the edges of lakes, preferably shallow ones where the parents can catch lots of fish to feed the family.
This is the most heavily cropped image you'll ever see, but at least I tried! It does show a hint of the light and dark colouring.
where there were three young looking over the edge at me!
I tried to photograph an osprey nest from below once. Yeah no, that didn't work too well. BTW You will get a mention in tomorrow's post.
ReplyDeleteIt always amazes me that they can build a nest so large!
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