Ospreys…
a bit of an obsession
I am lucky enough to spend a fair amount of time in Portugal, living near the stunningly beautiful Obidos Lagoon.
Twenty years ago I spotted an osprey there, over-wintering before heading north to breed. My Collins Guide did not have osprey listed in Portugal, but there he was.
As my wildlife photography became a mainstay of my time, I became obsessed with the idea of capturing a close-up view of an osprey, emerging from the lagoon, with a fish.
Ospreys were hunted to extinction a breeding population in England by the 1840s.
In 1996, Rutland Water was chosen for a reintroduction programme. The project has been a huge success with the first successful nesting in 2001 - the population has since grown into a self-sustaining colony that has also helped seed other osprey populations around the UK.
This is a great result, unless you happen to own a trout farm next to Rutland Water… the newly introduced birds treated the farm as a free buffet. Rather than bemoan the ospreys, the farm owners brilliantly first netted all but one pond, and then built a photographic hide on the last pond. It is a stunning facility that makes possible getting up close shots of ospreys. It still isn’t easy, and the photographers who go there still have to react quickly to get the shots.
The shot above is one of my photographs from a hide session - so now I have the shot I want to reproduce in the huge lagoon area of Portugal… my task is set.