Watching the majestic osprey soar through the sky is a sight to behold. It takes a professional photographer to shoot pictures of them when they’re flying. And an even better artist to get photos of them when they’re in the middle of hunting.
Enter Chen Chengguang, a Taiwanese photographer who takes artistic photos of birds. Some of his best bird photography work involves immortalizing ospreys with his camera lens. Especially his chronophotographs where pics of ospreys diving toward their prey are taken in several frames and then composited into one image.
Photographer Chen Chengguang took some incredible pictures of ospreys in the middle of hunting
Chen uses a technique called chronophotography to create frame-by-frame composite images
Ospreys live up to 30 years in the wild, according to National Geographic. They almost exclusively feast on fish-flesh. In fact, fish make up 99 percent of their diet. That’s some serious pescetarianism right there (minus the veggies).
These birds of prey mostly live around bodies of water because of their diets. Their bodies are perfect for hunting fish: they have curved claws and pads on their feet, which means their prey has little chance of escaping.
After osprey catch fish, they orient them headfirst to minimize wind resistance
Ospreys dive to the water’s surface from 30 to 100 feet (9 to 30 meters) in the air. That’s incredible! What’s almost equally as cool is that when an osprey flies with a fish in its talons, it orients it headfirst to reduce wind resistance.
Truly Majestic
The osprey population in the US was in danger back in the 1950s when their natural habitats were polluted with chemicals. Fortunately, they overcame that challenge and increased their population in some locations.
Osprey have curved claws and pads on their feet that are perfect for catching fish
These birds’ diets consist of 99 percent fish
