Triumph of the Fish Hawk

The wind whipped through the small, cramped tent and rustled the camo fabric. I yawned. It was about eight in the morning and I didn’t usually get outside until ten or eleven. This day however, was different. With my feet firmly planted 15 feet above the Missoula College parking lot, I gazed through my camera’s viewfinder at an organized stack of limbs. I was with Dr. Erick Greene, who I interviewed on August 31st, 2021 about the Montana Osprey Project. He invited me to photograph an Osprey nest along the Clark Fork and I gladly accepted. Back in the tent, I ignored the gentle flutter and buzz of a honeybee as it explored the enclosed space. There were two Osprey in the nest, the unfledged youngster named Antali and his mother, the world-famous Osprey, Iris.

  Back in the scissor lift overlooking the Clark Fork, Finnegan just took Iris’s place at the nest. After a few hours she returns and what a fish she brought! It appears to be a rainbow trout and it is quite large. He divides it between Antali and his older sister, Sum-eh, who had just swooped into the nest. For a few seconds, wings jostle and Sum-eh begins a never ending stream of sharp screeches, before Iris takes off to land somewhere nearby. The nest is less crowded then with only three large birds in it. After finishing the fish, Sum-eh is scolded out of the nest by her dad. I cannot tell which one is louder! With space to move around at last, Antali begins flapping and jumping as he strengthens his wing muscles. Sometimes he manages to hold himself in the air for a few seconds before he collapses back into the nest. I can only imagine how exhausting learning to fly is! After some frantic flapping he manages to hover for a longer period of time and then clumsily sets himself down again. This continues for a while before it is time to head back down and this amazing experience comes to an end. The scissor lift beeps as I descend to the warm concrete below. I am extremely thankful to Dr. Greene for inviting me on this brief, yet fascinating, trip to Iris the Osprey’s nest. This was an adventure that I am determined to never forget.