Readers’ wildlife photos and video

We have a small set of photos today taken in Florida by Bill Dickens. And there’s a video (also by Dickens) at the bottom. Bill’s captions are indented and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

An Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) has taken to dropping by weekly to my backyard on the Banana River in Cocoa Beach Florida.

Here’s some photos and a video of it eating a live Hardheaded Catfish (Ariopsis felis). It’s somewhat gruesome as it starts by eating the gills on one side, so it takes a while for the unfortunate fish to succumb.

The Osprey is still wet from having been in the water.

It takes around 20 minutes to consume most of the fish – they’re around 12-inches long. It messily leaves some of the carcass behind on the lawn. There’s a possum living in a brush pile in my yard that has learned to scout around under the tree at night to clean up the remains.

A video: