Osprey family

Or three-fourths of it anyhow. There are a couple of nesting pairs on man-provided platforms in the area. This one is inside a fenced area that belongs to the state tree nursery a few miles from here. The conservation organization I volunteer for leases a chunk of it to grow native prairie plants for mass seed production, so I can get access through them. Unfortunately, they are not early risers, so this was taken after the sun was already fairly high. I liked the crossed poses of the two youngsters in this one. To get a decent angle and keep far enough away not to unduly disturb the birds, this ended up being a pretty large crop.

7D, 500mm f4 ISL + 1.4TC, Black Widow on RRS legs (one leg on the ground and two in the back of my pickup with a canopy, which acted as my blind). f11, 1/3200, iso 640, manual exposure (I did brighten it up a bit in ACR). Processed in CS6 and cropped to 4.5MP. Taken Friday, July 26th at 8:44 am.

Your comments and criticisms are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for looking,