Ready To Fly

From Spokane follow spokane river until you are close to Tumtum or just south of ORV park on mountain bike trails.

Processed using Elements 8, cropped and resized to 8X10.

The lighting was still a bit harsh (mid to late afternoon)while I was searching for angles and curves or something interesting with the river. I crossed the river on a foot bridge that led to a mountain bike trail. An Osprey caught my attention as it flew up the river with a decent sized fish in its talons. It landed in the top of a tree way too far away to even try and get a photo with my 250mm. The sighting did lead me to looking for other birds that may be in the area. as I started looking more in the trees and less in the river, I did realize there were quite a few large nests in the area. There was another Osprey just sitting in the top of a tree almost as far away as the first one had become, but more easily accessable since the mountain bike trail seemed to head in the same direction. It ended up working quite well as the trail followed the side of a hill pretty high above the river which turned out to be almost the same height as the top of the tree. After setting up my cheap tripod (that's not the brand, its just cheap), shooting quite a few shots of the bird just sitting there, and waiting another 35 to 40 minutes, the wind kicked up and caused the bird to finally open its wings. It was what I had hoped and to further enhance the shot the Osprey happened to be facing my direction. In this particular shot its too bad I didn't have a 400mm high end lens with maybe a Nikon D800 or a new Canon 5D Mark 3 or something. But hey, you use what you have. It's better than not shooting.