What does an osprey think about while she is eating lunch?

I watched this female osprey with a freshly caught fish, and somewhere in the middle of her meal, she seemed to have something else on her mind.

Photo 1: There is no question about what she is doing. Fish firmly held in those extraordinary talons, head down, she is eating.

Photo 2: And then she stops. The fish is still right there beneath her feet, but for the moment she isn’t interested in eating it. Something has caught her attention.

Photo 3: Now she looks up into the pines. And this is the photograph that makes me wonder. What is she thinking about? Of course, I have absolutely no idea. But looking at her standing there over her half-eaten fish, I couldn’t help wondering whether somewhere in that osprey brain there might be the faintest thought: Fish. Again.

Photo 4: And eventually her attention returns to the matter at hand. Fish. Again.

For an osprey, that isn’t merely a preference. Ospreys are extraordinarily specialized fish-eaters. Their bodies, their feet, their flight and their hunting behavior are beautifully adapted to catching fish.

In the wild, that specialization is magnificent to watch. An osprey can plunge into the water, seize a living fish and carry it away in those remarkable feet.

But that specialization has another side.

When an injured osprey comes into rehabilitation and can no longer catch its own meals, feeding that bird becomes much more complicated. You are caring for an animal whose natural diet is overwhelmingly fish — the fresh catch that it was designed to hunt for itself.

Watching this healthy female standing in the pine with her catch, I found myself thinking about both sides of that specialization: how perfectly equipped she is for the life she lives, and how challenging it becomes when, for some reason, she temporarily cannot live it.

But I doubt she was contemplating any of that.

She had a fish to finish.