Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Wildlife: Osprey at Tanner Springs


A few weekends ago we watched an Osprey catch a fish. Of course at first we thought maybe it was a peregrine falcon. It took a passerby asking if we'd caught a picture of the Osprey, then some review of our photos and googling to determine that was correct. Very cool, since we've never seen an Osprey before! This article talks about the birds. We walked into the park thinking "hmm...I could've sworn there were more koi last time we were here." And now we know why. We watched him hang out on several balconies, and the metal awning of the building pictured above, much to the dismay of smaller birds in the area who made a few futile attempts to get him to leave. He swooped down a few times with no luck until finally he swooped down right above a couple of kids, grabbed a koi and flew off, around the corner to enjoy his feast. I felt very satisfied for him, even though it was just a captive pool of fish.

Tanner Springs is one of my favorite small parks in Portland, and one of the main reasons for that is the attempt to reintroduce native plant life and tanner creek (a creek that used to flow on the surface of the area, but was rerouted to flow below ground through pipes.) It's very cool that the park has brought back some wildlife as well, even if they're coming for captive fish who weren't really supposed to be in the park in the first place (according to the article linked above, people in the area started dumping them in the park at night, much to the dismay of park officials.)

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