The Old Time Osprey Religion

(From Return of the Osprey)

Another day in late June I set up my chair and scope at Chapin before sunset. It’s a cool, almost fall-like evening, and long shadows stretch from where I sit toward the nest. Though the tide is low, the shadows fill the creek bed dark blue like water. Even the Barbie doll in the nest glows radiant; she has somehow turned a cartwheel so that for the first time I notice that, while she wears no clothes, she does sport sunglasses. While I watch the nestlings they watch the sky; flying isn’t too far off and they are ready, primed and poised. In this light the new golden markings on the backs of their necks shine full orange—a pumpkin orange. Despite a deep sense of satisfaction, something makes me glance up from my journal, a half thought: the male should be back with a fish soon. On impulse I look to my right, and for the first time all year, maybe because of the dying light, I notice the speck that is the male before the nestlings do. This is a triumph. Sure enough he flies past me to the post, with a fish whose flatness says “flounder” until I see the spiked demon tale and recognize it as a skate, its white belly lit up red. I again feel a connection with this, my favorite bird, though I remind myself that this connection is only one-way. As the male starts tearing at this chewy meal, I sit back and, for a brief moment, feel entirely at home. For once the prospect of what I have to do tomorrow, the almost constant nagging and niggling of the future—of the imagined time when things will be better—subsides. I listen to the pulse of the ocean, slight but steady, and that sound pulses through the golden sand, the olive spartina, the blazing nest.

I walk back to the parking lot just in time to see the sun drop, the last fast motion descent, down to an orange-blue sliver, and then gone, fizzing in the ocean. I’m in a place that is very much my own when another human being intrudes. A big guy in a cutoff sweatshirt pauses from loading up his jeep to point at my telescope and ask what I’m up to. When I explain, he smiles.

“We got them over in Centerville, too,” he says, “We call them sea eagles.”

I smile back and for a second imagine I see a glint in the big man’s eye. Are you a fellow true believer? I want to ask him. Have you found Ospreys, too?