Has anybody ever seen an osprey perform a barrel-roll in flight? That is a full 360 degree sideways flip onto its back and round.
On 4th August 2009 I saw an osprey do this at Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland. (Lough Neagh has no breeding ospreys but birds pass through on migration increasingly regularly). This bird had just hovered, caught a fish and spent about ten minutes eating it. It then rose and soared in what immediately looked like a more leisurely fashion. Watching through the scope I saw it give brief chase to a heron before circling a bit more. Then when it was almost directly opposite me, it excecuted the 360 degree barrel-roll, soared a bit more then came down to its previous perch. It was a remarkable sight!
The bird showed other interesting behaviours on subsequent days including repeatedly skimming its talons in the water after eating as if to clean them and carrying half-eaten fish and sticks about in flight. The osprey was present for about a month with the last record I've heard about coming on 2nd September. It may have been an immature bird (the upper body feathers looked very mottled) but I'm not 100% certain on that.
Interested as I am in animal and especially avian play I suspect this aerial manouvre was done simply for enjoyment. A number of factors would suggest this. However there are other plausible explanations- perhaps it was display, sort of claiming the fishing grounds for itself.
Anyway anybody seen similar behaviour? Surely with the well observed ospreys at numerous nesting sites somebody has seen this sort of thing before? I could find nothing in BWPi but I'm not saying it's not in there cos it's sometimes difficult to read and I might have missed a bit.
On 4th August 2009 I saw an osprey do this at Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland. (Lough Neagh has no breeding ospreys but birds pass through on migration increasingly regularly). This bird had just hovered, caught a fish and spent about ten minutes eating it. It then rose and soared in what immediately looked like a more leisurely fashion. Watching through the scope I saw it give brief chase to a heron before circling a bit more. Then when it was almost directly opposite me, it excecuted the 360 degree barrel-roll, soared a bit more then came down to its previous perch. It was a remarkable sight!
The bird showed other interesting behaviours on subsequent days including repeatedly skimming its talons in the water after eating as if to clean them and carrying half-eaten fish and sticks about in flight. The osprey was present for about a month with the last record I've heard about coming on 2nd September. It may have been an immature bird (the upper body feathers looked very mottled) but I'm not 100% certain on that.
Interested as I am in animal and especially avian play I suspect this aerial manouvre was done simply for enjoyment. A number of factors would suggest this. However there are other plausible explanations- perhaps it was display, sort of claiming the fishing grounds for itself.
Anyway anybody seen similar behaviour? Surely with the well observed ospreys at numerous nesting sites somebody has seen this sort of thing before? I could find nothing in BWPi but I'm not saying it's not in there cos it's sometimes difficult to read and I might have missed a bit.