Fishing at Seeswood Pool in Nuneaton with Steve Philips I was having a hard time of it. Steve was catching some of the pool's lovely roach - I wasn't. Just as I got about as frustrated as it is possible to be a very large 'gull' appeared from the direction of town and flew over the lake toward us and then this gull turned into a very odd-shaped 'buzzard' when it stopped flapping its curiously bent and pointed wings, stretched out its finger primaries and started to soar and wheel. I watched it for a while, not really concentrating upon it and then decided that I might get a picture if it came close enough and so I readied the camera.
The bird hovered over the centre of the lake for a few seconds and then suddenly folded its wings and dropped like a stone crashing onto the water in an attempt to take a fish off the top. It took a few seconds for the surprising maneuver to register for what it really was - I was still stuck in buzzard land - the hunting dive of an osprey!
Steve saw it too and was thinking the same thing, convinced that a buzzard had tried to take a grebe - but there had been no grebe to take. I found out later that I did get a picture, a very bad picture indeed though, of the moment it folded its wings and began its dive. Sometimes I think I'll have to get a better camera for such moments as point and shoot compact digitals are too slow and cannot focus easily upon distance birds in flight against sky and often just hazard a guess creating a blurred and useless shot.
The next shots were not much better and even when the bird was as close as it ever got to me the pictures were rubbish, but I did get one fair one that shows the bird's distinctive wing shape in near focus. Unfortunately it exposed for the sky and so the underside is shown in silhouette and the light underparts were lost in the dark.
On its way back to its winter grounds the bird had stopped off at Seeswood Services for a bite to eat. That it missed its target was too bad - wouldn't it have been nice to catch the classic osprey shot of the bird with a large roach in its talons? But it fished just as badly as I did and flew back up to try again, only it got bored and flew off a few minutes later, headed South to toward Coventry and the next patch of open water no doubt.
Like the Spanish Inquisition, no-one expects an osprey. That they are seen quite regularly over open freshwater all over the Midlands and South in Spring and Autumn came of a surprise to me - they are reported more often than I'd thought they'd be - but this was the first time I'd ever seen one and I don't expect to see one again for some time, though I'll always have an eye open in the future when fishing...
For very large gulls and odd shaped buzzards!
