Hanging in there

But in this case it's a horrible thing to have happen. This photo shows the guys from Powder River Energy rescuing an adult female osprey from one of their power poles. GRUMPY had been building a nest, had a half dozen sticks in place, when she apparently stepped the wrong direction and got her left leg caught in a strand of baling twine.

Osprey tend to use a lot of non-nest material in the construction, plastic bags, twine, rags, etc. I'm amazed that more young birds aren't caught just before they fledge.

Thank you to Dan Thiele, WGF and Brad Rogers, USFWS, for making the arrangements to get the bird out of this sticky situation and driving her here from Buffalo. That's about a three hour drive over the mountains to the east.

Right now it's wait and see time. It may take many weeks for the damage to repair itself. The really bad thing is that osprey are very difficult to keep in captivity as they don't self feed very well. That means force feeding which is not fun for either of us. Hopefully she'll get into eating trout by herself.