Woolwich, Maine

The not-so-little one will be seven weeks old tomorrow! It's quite amazing to think about - but a mere seven weeks after being an egg - young ospreys can fly! Most wait until 8 weeks or a bit more - but 7 weeks is considered the start of the window for fledging, or taking the first flight away from the nest.

I looked at the monitor as I walked into the lobby - and wow (all pictures click bigger)!

It's hard to tell the gender of chicks without a blood test - but females are larger than males - and this chick looks at least as big as Mom!

I arrived at the Taste of Maine Restaurant mid-afternoon, so had a choice of tables - and the person seating me (and having seen me there a lot!) suggested the table in the corner, with a view of the nest. Who was I to disagree?

And it wasn't long before Mom and chick popped up to say hello.

(I actually think they might have been having a heated discussion about staying home alone or other teenage issues - but it was amazing to see the young osprey looking almost as big as Mom!)

You may have noticed in my second picture that even though it was sunny and warm at the restaurant, there were some clouds on the horizon. And as they moved closer, Mom flew off, leaving the chick alone in the nest. I'm just a human, so it's not for me to say who won - Mom was probably sheltered during the brief but intense shower that followed, but the chick - having the nest to herself, with no worries about bumping anyone and with the wind beneath her wings - got to do this:

And then the rain really started pouring down - and I thought the chick would hunker down into the nest - but no - she is a child of air and water (and lots of fish) - and she reveled in it! My pictures don't do her actions justice - she was getting some nice lift, in spite of the force of the rain trying to hold her down.

I'm now thinking this is not uncommon behavior for young osprey - I noticed something similar with a recently fledged osprey chick at a nest with a cam in New Hampshire - the chick was almost certainly somewhere safe when the rain began to come down in buckets - but felt the need to not only fly through the rain - but to flap and hover over the nest once he had arrived:

I left as the rain was letting up, and the sky was clearing - and got a final shot of the young one watching one of the adults (probably Mom) returning - and I wonder if she was thinking (as I was) that her wings were just as big - and almost as strong. ♡

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If you'd like to see additional pictures from this nest, and from the osprey nest "around the corner" on the Sasanoa River, you can use the link for my Local Wildlife Home Page at the top of the page to see an index to all the visits.