Each family occupied their own nesting platform/tree, but a marsh as vast as the Tuttle wildlife area apparently wasn’t big enough for the male Osprey. He mounted a concerted, prolonged attack on one of the eagles as it flew over the marsh to its nest. The aerial acrobatics were astonishing, especially the way the eagle could flip over onto its back in the air in an instant to aim its talons at the Osprey.
The evening was looming, the birders were tired and the temperature had dropped. I was especially ready to go home and go straight to bed. But you know if you leave too soon, you’re going to miss something, so I waited it out as Walter continued to scope the water from the golf club balcony. Then, all of a sudden, we spotted a large shape in the sky.
Flatwoods flourish in the plains left by retreating glaciers millennia ago. They don’t quite feel like upland or bottomland forests. The trees are not necessarily all coniferous or deciduous or even all native. They are just as their name suggests. Flat. Woods.
“As flat as a pool table,” says Tom Lally of the woodlands.