Virginia Osprey Festival
Posted on 04/13/2024 in misc
We made the 90 minute drive up to Colonial Beach this morning for the annual Osprey Festival. Colonial Beach is right on the Potomac River, and there dozens of Osprey nests around town. It's early nesting season so the birds are building nests now. We saw a couple of dozen (at least) active nests, plus a variety of other water birds that you would expect to see on a large river. We also saw a pair of mute swans, which were lifers for us.
It's a volunteer run one-day festival with a low $10 entrance fee. That fee got us a private golf cart tour of the nesting sites. It was totally worth it.
The town square area was taken over with vendor tables selling jewelry, art, and promoting other local natural resource focused organizations. The state and national parks in the area were also represented. There were also a few food trucks. We were tempted, but since we are eating out tonight we were good and ate the sandwiches we brought with us for lunch.
It's a neat day trip and totally worth the effort if you are in central Virginia and have an interest in birds.
