Osprey Encounter
Sometimes you search far and wide only to find what you’re looking for right near you.
A few years back my wife and I decide to go for a ride in the mountains. My intention was to see if I could photograph some wildlife. Sheila, my wife, came along just for the sight seeing and our dog Padmai came along just to be with us. Dogs are like that.
The destination for the day was a semi-maintained mountain road called Powerface Trail. The road is one of our favorites. This narrow gravel road meanders the foothills on the Eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains about a hour from Calgary. The road does not get a lot of traffic and is not open during the winter months. In fact, it has been closed for over a year as of this writing due to flooding in 2013, washing parts of the road away. Being a backcountry road is seems its repair is low priority. It’s not unusual to see a wide variety of wildlife in the area including grizzly or black bear, mule or white tail deer, elk or even moose if you’re lucky.
A few years back my wife and I decide to go for a ride in the mountains. My intention was to see if I could photograph some wildlife. Sheila, my wife, came along just for the sight seeing and our dog Padmai came along just to be with us. Dogs are like that.
The destination for the day was a semi-maintained mountain road called Powerface Trail. The road is one of our favorites. This narrow gravel road meanders the foothills on the Eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains about a hour from Calgary. The road does not get a lot of traffic and is not open during the winter months. In fact, it has been closed for over a year as of this writing due to flooding in 2013, washing parts of the road away. Being a backcountry road is seems its repair is low priority. It’s not unusual to see a wide variety of wildlife in the area including grizzly or black bear, mule or white tail deer, elk or even moose if you’re lucky.
On this day we started our little trek as per our usual at Forgetmenot Pond, a beautiful clear mountain lake with a small campground beside. We traveled the winding road and took in the sites of the Rocky Mountains at a leisurely pace. On this day however, the wildlife decided not to reveal themselves to us, at least not here. We did see a Jeep Cherokee that manage to get into quite a jam, either by driving too fast or more likely just not paying attention to the road. For once however, you can’t blame cell phones as this is a long way from any cell service. The Jeep had gone over the edge of a rather steep drop-off at the road side. The driver was long gone by the time we got there, however, he did have a small bit of luck on their side. After dropping the 10 or 15 feet down to their resting spot, their progress down was stopped by some small trees which prevented them from rolling all the way into the valley. Pure speculation on my part, but I’m guess those trees meant the difference between having a really expensive tow job following some equally expensive repairs and having a crumpled ball of Jeep. In short I think those tree saved their lives.
After leaving Powerface Trail we made our way back to the Trans-Canada highway. Four lane roads, in my opinion, are only good for one thing and that is to get from point A to B quickly. However, they are at times near impossible to avoid. As we neared Calgary we decided that our wandering spirits had not yet been satisfied and that a diversion to the road less travel was needed. So off we went on some random roads, with only a general plan of getting back into the city as we wandered around the large estate homes at the western edge of the city. This is when all the wandering for the day was rewarded. As we drove along we came over a little rise in the road and I spotted something sitting on the side of the road about a 100 meters ahead of us. I pulled the car over and realized that just ahead of us was large bird of prey, an Osprey as it turns out.
I grabbed my camera, too excited to change lens. I had on my old Sigma 70-300mm, my very first telephoto lens, but it did a pretty good job in this case. At the time I thought I’d be able to get a few shots from a distance and then the bird would fly away and we would go on our way, happy to have seen the magnificent bird. What happened however was much more special...
I grabbed my camera, too excited to change lens. I had on my old Sigma 70-300mm, my very first telephoto lens, but it did a pretty good job in this case. At the time I thought I’d be able to get a few shots from a distance and then the bird would fly away and we would go on our way, happy to have seen the magnificent bird. What happened however was much more special...
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At this point I repeated the sequence of taking a couple pictures, then getting a little closer. Expecting at each stop that that would be the last one and the raptor would have enough of me and be on his way. I got closer and closer and still he held his ground until I was not much more than 15 feet away. I managed to get a real good look at him and since he showed no signs of being injured I assumed that he was a juvenile. I remember wondering if he could fly and the answer came quickly as he finally had enough of my intrusion and flew off. Now this is the point in the story where you would think it would come to a end and we could all go away happy with an amazing close encounter with one of the great hunters of the sky. But the story has one more chapter.
The bird indeed took off but instead of just flying away, he decided that his best option was did fly a big circle around me and then land on the brightest object nearby. Yes that bird decided to land right on the hood of our yellow XTerra with my wife and dog inside. Sheila literally had a front row seat to the show. You could say that the tables were turned and she became the show as the Osprey stared at her and Padmai through our front window. It was like the Osprey had found its own private human zoo. This whole time, the bird showed very little signs of fear. I kept taking pictures as I walked back and now managed to get even closer than before, so close in fact that in some of the pictures you can see the reflection of our yellow XTerra in his eye.
The bird indeed took off but instead of just flying away, he decided that his best option was did fly a big circle around me and then land on the brightest object nearby. Yes that bird decided to land right on the hood of our yellow XTerra with my wife and dog inside. Sheila literally had a front row seat to the show. You could say that the tables were turned and she became the show as the Osprey stared at her and Padmai through our front window. It was like the Osprey had found its own private human zoo. This whole time, the bird showed very little signs of fear. I kept taking pictures as I walked back and now managed to get even closer than before, so close in fact that in some of the pictures you can see the reflection of our yellow XTerra in his eye.
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He finally did fly off for good but not before leaving us
with a special memory that will last a lifetime. Even today as I write this, it seems like only
yesterday even though it’s been almost 6 years. Even more amazing is that this happened not in
some far off mountain road, but at the edge of a major city. It just goes to show that we can find many
amazing things wherever we may find ourselves.
We just need to take the time to look and explore.
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