In our marina is a baby osprey who is a fledgling.  He is trying to learn to dive for fish, but instead of diving straight down decisively and snagging his fish as the adults do, he skims over the water like a thrown pebble, and makes two or three tentative grabs at the water surface-never coming up with anything! He appears to be becoming increasingly frustrated and hungry.

This morning, he was going into his run when a venerable great blue heron flew nearby. I guess our osprey lost its head or maybe just saw the heron as something big, slow, and possibly edible. He immediately dove at the heron in attack pose, and oh my gosh!

What offended prehistoric squawking from the heron! What squeaks and chirps from the osprey! It only lasted a second or two- the heron batted at the osprey’s head with its huge wings and the fledgling osprey tumbled in the air and quickly retreated.

The heron flew off, unharmed but visibly miffed, voicing curmudgeonly croaks.  The young osprey circled away, looking for all the world as if he hoped no one had witnessed this embarrassing encounter.