Ospreys

by abbamoses

In our travels up and down our stretch of the Ohio river (between Bridgeport OH and Steubenville OH) we recently spotted an amazing thing. Along an especially grim stretch of industrial landscape that includes a large coal-burning power plant, we saw a large bird’s nest, several feet across,  atop one of the many towers that support the electrical power lines that radiate from the plant. We wondered if the large, hawk-like birds in the nest might be bald eagles, but soon decided they were ospreys, big raptors that feed almost exclusively on fish.

Some online research yielded this short video of a couple of ospreys in the nest, with a beautiful view of one osprey landing with a fish in its talons. Apparently the nest was established in 1995 — at which time it was home to the only known ospreys in Ohio — and has been in use ever since.

It’s especially good to see these imposing birds so visibly re-establishing the natural in the midst of a landscape of coal, concrete, steel and electricity.