Technically this is sub-par (even for me) but I thought someone might find the behavior interesting.
I think this is a Northern Oriole (anyone?) harassing the Osprey. He did actually succeed in driving the osprey off her perch. Her nest is directly below her and unfortunately I don't think the pair were successful in the egg department this year. It is already the end of June and other Osprey pairs in the area seem to be sitting on eggs. I'm not sure what the egg laying, hatching, fledging schedule is in the northern lats (Seattle) but it doesn't look good for this pair.
This is a pretty heavy crop and the action lasted about long enough for me to get the camera out of the bag and fire off a couple grab shots.
Hi Jon- Welcome to the forum! This looks like a Bullock's Oriole (which used to be grouped with the Baltimore into one species, the Nonrthern Oriole) mobbing an Osprey. Mobbing is quite a common behaviour and is used by the mobber to protect themselves or their nest/eggs/chicks. Although the Osprey presents no threat to the oriole, this is an example where a simple evolutionary "Rule of Thumb" makes a mistake and spills over into an inappropriate context. The Rule of Thumb here might be "mob any bird that looks like a predatory raptor". Most of the time the behaviour works as intended but occasionally as here, it was not really necessary. Evolution has essentially "decided" that it is not worth developing discrimination about what to mob and what not to mob- for the oriole, if it looks like a raptor, mob it. It is very rare that mobbing puts the mobber in an danger and the oriole is really just "doing what comes naturally"! Thanks for posting.
Wow! Thank you very much for the great info. That defensive behavior makes sense as I believe there were
Oriole young taking flying lessons in the immediate area.
Off topic a little...I took a peak at your website. Great gallery and I love the look of your finished product. I am struggling with my post processing skills(among other things) and was wondering how much more success I would have graduating from Elements to full blown Photoshop. Am I wasting my time with Elements and would CS4 get me by for the time being? I'm on a bit of a budget and trying to invest in better glass.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
And there's a tonne of useful links on the web and Photoshop books out there.
For me I need to selectively adjust selected areas of the image and I use masking to accomplish this. Last time I checked, Elements doesn't provide this functionality- but I could have missed it so can you Quickmask in Elelments? Anyway, this is a showstopper for me so I need Photoshop.
I would suggest posting a specific question to the BPN Work Flow forum- the Moderators are top-notch and there are many BPN members and contributors who are very knowledgeable.
Brave Little Bird
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