This is the time of year to see juvenile ospreys around the Lake. They have left the nest, but migration is still a few weeks off. These birds will not return for two or three years when, as adults, they come to breed.
The juvenile is subtly different (and more picturesque) than the adult: its wing and back feathers look as if dipped in cream; its eyes are a riveting orange (an adult’s are yellow). It also has a buff-coloured necklace, but this feature is often shared with a female adult.
Really satisfying osprey pictures are infrequent; this is one.
Etty versus Doug
Etty would not have approved of Doug or his lawn.
Etty was the daughter of Charles Darwin and she helped her father with his editing, alas, often with an eye to bowdlerizing biology to conform with her Victorian sensibilities.
Etty’s oddest campaign was her attempt to cleanse the world of, what she viewed as, an obscene fungus. As Etty’s niece reports:
Douglas Sly is a lakeside resident who has harboured in his lawn the object of Etty’s moral outrage: a common stinkhorn. This fungus’ scientific name tells all: Phallus impudicus—the shameless phallus. Here is Doug’s picture of it.
Douglas Sly’s picture is used with permission.