The Osprey Family Diary

By Richard T Cheng

Prof Cheng lives in Link-horn Bay, a bird sanctuary in Southern Virginia’s shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Ospreys were a rare sight in this area until about ten years ago.
This is a story about the life and struggle of a young bird couple to raise a family under many adverse conditions. In five months, Cheng have learned so m

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781950955275

Richard T Cheng

Professor Richard Cheng was born in 1934 and lived in the rural areas of Chunking and Du-Yung where he was forced to move frequently. He had to catch fish and eels for food to supplement for their meals at the age of 9. When the war with Japan ended, he lived between Nanjing and Chunking and went to Taiwan with his parents when the communists took over the mainland where he grew up as a young man. Upon graduation from college, he decided to go to the United State of America. Upon arriving the States, he encountered the shock of the different cultures, but he learned quickly to adjust his attitude. He fixed radios and television sets to support his living until he obtained the MS degree. He soon moved his wife and children over to the U.S.A. He started a teaching career and obtained his doctorate degree. He then worked to get Computer Science programs establish for several universities. When he reached the position of Eminent Professorship, he looked to business career. Through hard work and sweet, he was successful in business and was called the $240 Million Professor.

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The Osprey Family Diary

Richard T. Cheng, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2019 by Richard T. Cheng, Ph.D.

ISBN Softcover 978-1-950955-89-3

Ebook 978-1-950955-27-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Printed in the United States of America.

Book Vine Press

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Palatine, IL 60067

Preface

The Link-horn Bay area is a bird sanctuary, located in southern Virginia shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Osprey was a rare sight in this area until about ten years ago, when a few pairs of Osprey appeared. They made tall pine trees their resting and nesting places high above and far from people’s homes.

Recently, the osprey population has increased. In my neighborhood, I counted there are five or six pairs. They often cruise above the water in the bay and make occasional swoop at the water surface to grab a fish.

Osprey is a fish-eating bird. It can be distinguished from an eagle by its white underparts.

It can live up to thirty years. Its body can grow from twenty to twenty-three inches long and its wingspan can reach six feet. The osprey weighs three to four pounds.

My house is on the bay and only fifty feet away from the water. On the bay, almost every house has a peer and a boat lift. A pair of young ospreys has selected the boat lift of our next-door neighbor right behind our kitchen. They built their nest on top of the motor housing, which has provided me an opportunity to watch and photograph the activities from the rear deck of the house, at the level of the nest and from a high vantage from our third-floor windows. It is truly an opportunity of a lifetime to monitor so closely the wildlife, without traveling far away and the need of building a shelter and hiding in it, to wait for an opportunity to take a photoshot.

I used a camcorder to shoot a video, a point-and-shoot small camera’s high-definition video to record wide angle movement, and a 400 mm telephoto lens to capture close-up still pictures.

This is a story about the life and struggle