Welcome to the inaugural edition of Tuesday Tweets. The rules are very simple. Just post a photo or drawing of any type of bird on your blog then come here and enter your info in the inlinkz tool below. Make sure to include a link back here from your post. Feel free to copy the jpg above and use it with your post or any where else on your site. Then please visit other sites that link up to see their great bird posts.
This year I decided to branch out a bit and check out some new places to do my photography. One of those places was the Wargo Nature Center in Hugo, MN. Wargo is part of the 5,000 acre Rice Creek Chain of Lakes Regional Park Reserve.
The nature center is located on a peninsula over looking George Watch Lake. Because of its accessibility to the lake it offers recreation opportunities, such as canoe, kayak or snow shoe rental, as well as nature watching.
The big reason for my visits was the occupied osprey platform. There are numerous osprey platforms around the Twin Cities, most of which were occupied and many closer to my house then Wargo, but Wargo is one of the best locations for photographing the osprey. Wargo is the only location that I know of in the Twin Cities with a blind set up to watch the nest. The blind has a good view of the poll and it is located south of the nest so the sun is always somewhat at your back.
After my many visits some of the people working at the visitors center began to recognize me and let me know about the upcoming banding. It was quite exciting to be there to photograph the banding of three new osprey chicks.
Mom and dad were pretty excited too, but it was a much different type of excitement. They circled in the sky above us as the invading predators took their babies from the nest. In the end though the osprey were victorious as the chicks were returned and the invaders driven away.
About six weeks later the chicks were full grown and ready to fledge. The adults had their work cut out for them trying to catch enough food to feed three full sized osprey plus themselves. Eventually the young were able to find their own food so there was no more reason for them to return to the nest which meant it was the end of my osprey photography but there was still plenty of wildlife at Wargo to photograph and hopefully next year the osprey will return.
We also spotted some osprey, sometimes called fishing hawk. We sat and watched one fish in the Gibbons River on Monday morning. It would fly over the water looking for a fish. Then it would stop and hover, almost kestrel like, over it's target and then fold up it's wings and drive down plunging into the river.
It was very cool to watch. Unfortunately this time he was not successful.
Later in the week I spotted an osprey in Lamar Valley near the Lamar River. It was sitting on a tree that had one time housed an osprey nest but the tree had died and the nest had been abandon. I went in for a closer look and the osprey took of and flew a short way down the Lamar River. I watched where he flew and saw that he had gone to where his mate was sitting on a nest.
The nest was on the top of a tree that was at the shore of the river. This left the nest slightly below my eye level as I stood on the hill above. I took some shots and hoped to get a glimpse of some eggs or chicks in the nest. Unfortunately I began to draw attention from other park visitors who stopped to find out what I was taking pictures of. 
The nest was not visible from the road because it was below the hill so most people just drove past not aware of the nesting osprey and I really wanted to keep things that way so I packed up and moved on.
You can see from the pictures below that one of the osprey is down inside the nest. It stayed down there the entire time that I observed them. This would suggest that there may be eggs in the nest. There have been about 90 nesting platforms placed through out the Twin Cities metro area during the past 20 years as part of an osprey reintroduction project started by the Hennepin Parks Association, now know as the Three Rivers Park District. The project began in 1984 and had a goal of having 10-15 nesting pair in the Twin Cities. In 2004 there were 41 nesting pairs in the area with 53 chicks hatched.
You can see one of the osprey down deep in the nest.
Osprey are sometimes referred to as fishing hawks. They eat almost exclusively fish and always nest near water. Osprey typically migrate between wintering grounds in the south to breeding areas in Canada, Alaska, the upper Great Lakes, and the Northwest United States. The osprey pictured below was photographed over the Lamar River in Yellowstone in September of 2002.
Osprey live in Florida year round. This Osprey was photographed in Everglades National Park in February 2006.
This weekend, May 5th and 6th, there will be a homecoming celebration for the Roseville osprey so if you have time, visit them during the day on Saturday or Sunday near the intersection of Lexington and County Road C2.
