Awaiting an osprey at Frampton Court Lake

I had to go to a hospital today for an MRI scan, which turned out to be a very unusual experience. I’d heard they were noisy but no-one had described what you’d hear. It came to my mind that it was as if I was hearing a sampling session in the early days of Kraftwerk. Industrial level banging, bleeps, rumbles and hi pitched whirrs. I survived. I found the wanderings of my mind to distract me took me to strange historical places in my life.

Afterwards as I was in our local ‘city’ I took the opportunity of stocking up on Asian ingredients, such as fresh tofu, fresh turmeric, rice noodles, four types of Indian and Pakistani poppadums, rice vermicelli, very good fresh ginger and lemon grass and our favourite ‘Healthy Boy’ brand sweet chilli sauce from Thailand. Excellent produce which I’ve been missing for many weeks.

On the way home I wandered the quiet roads sout to Frampton on Severn as I wanted to take the opportunity of catching the osprey had still been fishing on the Court lake yesterday.

There were three other photographers on the shore of the lake in the optimal spot, who all reported that an osprey had been seen early in the morning. One man said he’d been standing there for four hours without a sighting. I jested that last time I came to see an osprey I’d only had to wait ten minutes for it to fly in from the river Severn over our heads and onto a tree on the island opposite to us. I’m pleased to say that about thirty minutes later an osprey arrived from a similar direction and flew to a different tree on the other island, but sadly beyond our view. I did manage a couple of frames of it flying above the tree as it prepared to descend onto its perch. I’ve posted one of the shots as an ‘Extra’.

Meanwhile we carried on generally chatting, and then in particular I had a good long chat with William A. on a variety of wide ranging subjects. Very interesting. As we chatted the light improved and the dominant heavy dark cloud eased away to allow the sun to shine down on the water and the trees beyond us. The nearer trees in my blip are on the island, and the swan at the left of the frame is swimming virtually beneath where the osprey was hiding on the far side.

I took a few snaps of the scene as we waited, which pleasingly revealed the arrival of autumn’s hues. We did see the osprey fly away from us eventually, but it wasn’t to be visible again. I waited a while but I felt like going home after being there for about 90 minutes. I shook hands with William and we both said that we hoped we might meet again.