The Dive

The Dive
(From Return of the Osprey)

1. Ospreys are the only raptors that dive fully into the water to catch their prey. Try to imagine the physical sensation. To skim across the sky, above the ocean, peering down with eyes that can see into the shallows from forty, sixty, even a hundred feet up. To catch a glint or the shadow of a movement and know it to be a fish, the one thing that keeps you alive. To hover, adjust, beating your wings so that you stay in place, like a giant kingfisher or hummingbird. Then to dive, to commit, to tuck with folded wings and plunge downward at over forty miles an hour while still keeping your eyes on the prey, calculating its size and movement. To adjust in mid-air, re-directing, considering even the refraction of the fish's image in the water, before pulling in your wings and diving again. And then, at the last second before hitting the water, to throw your wings back and your talons forward, striking feet first. To plunge in, splash, immerse, and make contact at the same time, trapping, piercing, clutching a slippery, scaled, cold-blooded creature.

Now imagine what comes next. Securing the fish, aided by the sharp, horny scales on the pads beneath your toes. For a moment being out of your element and in your prey's, feeling wet, awkward, ungainly. Then lifting off from the water with a great thrust of exertion, soaked and heavy, hefting an animal that may weigh half of what you do. Beating your wings furiously and rising, shaking the water off like a wet dog, already using your reversible outer talon to adjust the squirming fish, turning it so that it faces forward to reduce drag as you lift into the air, triumphant (or at the very least successful), shaking off silver flecks of spray.

To even imagine a dive is to get excited. What a bold way to live! To find one thing you do well and then to stake your life on it. It's as simple and direct as passion. It is passion. Peter Matthiessen wrote: "Simplicity is the whole secret of well-being." If so, the ospreys have got it figured out. It isn't hard to picture a band of primitive osprey tribesmen watching the birds and learning from them. One thing they might have learned, and one thing that appeals to me, is how the osprey's dive weds calculated patience to wild aggression. He who hesitates is smart, at least if when he finally commits he commits fully. For the ospreys the hesitation is as important as the dive. The birds have a remarkable success rate, some catching well over fifty percent of what they dive for, (like humans, athleticism varies; a few particularly adept birds catch close to ninety), and this is due in good part to the pre-dive patience, the search for the right target. This careful adjustment will often carry over into the dive itself. After the bird has tucked its wings and dropped down thirty feet, it may pause and readjust, and it may continue this a time or two again as if descending imaginary stairs. But while the pre-dive ritual demands control and calculation, the plunge itself is about the opposite of control. It is a moment of full commitment, of abandon, and finally, of immersion.

The Dive Redux.
(From Soaring with Fidel)

2. I have vast experience in not seeing birds. Because I'd become obsessed with ospreys while on Cape Cod, some people considered me an "expert," but an expert I was not. I’d become particularly adept at not seeing the birds dive. The dive is the osprey's tour de force: the bird first hovers in the air like a giant hummingbird, then hurtles down at reckless speeds, headfirst, until, at the last possible second, right before hitting the water, it pops a wheelie and enters the water feet first, often snaring a live fish with those talons and scaly toes. Though other people seem to see these dives all the time, while sunbathing or boating or fishing, I have witnessed precious few given the hours I've devoted to watching. Once, after presenting a slide show and talk on the birds at a lodge in Colorado, I walked outside and saw an osprey flying above a mountain lake. It was a beautiful sight, the bird flashing its black and white semaphore wings, a perfect moment. I walked closer to the lake until I was standing about fifteen feet behind an old couple, retirees who'd just attended my lecture and were now sitting on a bench watching the bird. I planned on saying hello to the old folks, basking in my role as birder celebrity, maybe imparting some osprey knowledge, but first I had a practical matter to attend to. My laces had become loose so I dropped down to tie my sneakers. It was as I was looping the second bow that I heard the woman squeal:

"Oh, my goodness, did you see that?"

"I did," said the man. "Amazing. Right into the water!"

I looked up to see the osprey flying off, the glint of a fish shining in its talons. The bird had apparently waited until the exact moment I bent my head to make its strike.