Hancock House Publishers
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The nest I took these pictures of on Friday, June 23, caught my eye as it was right beside highway 99 in the midst of Marble Canyon - a scenic area that winds between tall bluffs of marble and limestone with breathtakingly blue lake-shores.

The friends I stayed with in Sicamouse took me to a small pub for dinner. The pub is on the road to Vernon (Highway 97A) in a place called Grindrod. Along the way they made sure I got a picture of the nest at the top of a pole, just beside the highway. This pole was obviously put there specifically for the osprey. I couldn't see whether there were young in it, and didn't see an adult nearby. My friends assured me they had seen young in it the day before, so I'll take their word for it - of course they thought it was an eagle's nest but it's much too small and exposed.

My ride this year took me through prime osprey country. Along the Arrow and Kootenay lakes there are hundreds (thousands?) of nests - many of them in full view of the road.

Some of the hydro poles even had two nests on them. Many sections had at least one nest on each of the several poles in sight, one after the other.

While I only saw one nest that I could be absolutely sure had young in it, many had adults either in branches nearby or in the air above. Of course I had to keep my eye on the road as that was why I was there. The roads I travelled are "Destinations Highways" - roads that have been specifically rated (and documented in a book) to be absolutely the best roads in BC for someone interested in the twisty/turnies; scenery, remoteness and excellent road engineering.

DH2, the second best road in BC according to the book, is a stretch of highway 6 from Coldstream near Vernon, to the Needles ferry on Upper Arrow Lake. There were a few nests near the Coldstream end, but other than the interpretive center sign shown here (at the Needles ferry) I really didn't see much of the ospreys. The road comes quickly to the lake down a fairly steep hill ending at the ferry slip, with no intervening town or any drive along the lakeshore.

Not so the other side of the ferry. From that point on for several miles I was hardly out of sight of a nest or a bird in the air. All the way to Nakusp there were nests.

At Nakusp the road turns away from the lake and the number of nests diminished dramatically until I came near Slocan Lake. They increased again to New Denver where the road again turns away from the lake, this time toward Kaslo, on Kootenay Lake.

There were a few nests visible from Kaslo down to Balfour. From there the ferry took me over to Kootenay Bay. This marks the Northern end of DH1 (a piece of highway 3A) - the best motorcycle road in BC. I have to admit I didn't really look for nests - but did see a couple out of the corners of my eyes as I enjoyed every twisted kilometer. The road winds down the shore of Kootenay Lake and eventually cuts across to Creston. From there I was headed home as fast as I could as the day was waining.

My wife and I have watched the ospreys along Pitt River for a number of years now. They nest on top of the pilings put there to tie up log booms.

Many times, as we've driven throughout British Columbia we've spied the nests, typically on top of one of BC Hydro's many transmission poles - usually the 3-legged ones with double cross-arms, but not always.

I have to admit that, while I had my camera, I didn't have my tripod or monopod with me, so many of the shots didn't turn out all that well. The ones shown here are the best of the bunch - showing the bird hovering, diving, out of the water with a fish, and flying off. It lighted in a tree some hundreds of meters from where I was, and seemed to enjoy its repast.