The time of the hear has come around again for the Gillette Shows to set up set up their fair of several days at the property formerly known as the Berkshire Mall, in Lanesborough MA.  Beginning a year ago we welcomed a couple of unexpected visitors.  A pair of Ospreys decided one of the very tall lamp fixtures on the former mall property would make a great place to build a nest. When the fair came to the  mall last year, several of us were concerned whether the nesting would successfully fledge any young.  To see how the osprey nest was progressing, I bought a ticket to the Ferris wheel.  With camera in hand, the ride allowed me enough altitude to see the goings on inside of the nest.  As I reached the peak height, I fired off a few exposures and repeated this process until I was certain I might have something in focus.  However, as I thought the close proximity to the fair activities  indicated by my exposures, conveyed a certain amount of stress expressed by the bird as zi laid on the eggs beneath.  A couple of months later, one of the nestlings did survive to successfully fledge.

Here we are a year later with a similar dilemma.  Fortunately, for this week’s fair, salvation for the osprey nest may have come in the form of a cut off low pressure system which lasted for 3 days, then after a day and a half of fair weather, another low which has a qpf of 3-4 inches of rainfall has served to curtail most of the Gillette Show’s activity.  Hopefully the precipitation event won’t be too stressful for the birds, particularly if they had enough to eat during the brief respite between the two weather makers.