If you’d seen me pulling in to Fish Creek on Cty F yesterday, you’d probably have thought I’d lost my marbles. I didn’t look happy. I was ecstatic. Like, bouncing-in-my-seat, cheering and clapping and screaming, kind of ecstatic. A level of enthusiasm that is considered not P.C. in most circles.  Luckily the car windows were closed. :)

See, as I rounded the corner, and looked up at the top of the Cellcom tower, there was an osprey. The female osprey, very very likely the same bird who’s been nesting up there with her mate for the last 3 years now. (I am guessing it’s the female, given the brown ‘necklace’ of feathers around the upper chest; this is more common with the females, whereas males typically have all-white chests.) The same ospreys usually return to the same nesting spot every year.

She was perched on the same spire, sitting in the same direction as always (looking north), surveying her Kingdom, as if she owns it all, and all of the clutter and we people buzzing about below are just incidental. :)

The reason I was so incredibly happy to see her was because I was worried they’d been shot to death in Central or South America, where our ospreys overwinter. Ospreys will sometimes find a fish farm and set up residence there. To them, it’s just a good food supply. Of course, to the fish farmer, it’s lost profits. So the farmers take to their shotguns and kill the ospreys hunting their ponds.

Every spring I check the local nests, almost obsessively, worried that “our” ospreys unknowingly made a poor choice over winter and were shot and killed.

This is especially a problem in the Dominican Republic, which is a deadly place especially for first-year migrant juveniles who decide end their first migration in the D.R. and take up winter residence, not realizing what a dangerous place it is. The juvies who continue south to South America are often (but not always) headed to safer grounds, at least in terms of the risk of being shot. (Read Meadow’s story)

I sat in the parking lot at the Top of the Hill shops, which is right next door to the tower, and watched her in the binoculars. Holy cow, their talons are huge, their hulking bodies and wide shoulders so imposing! They are an absolutely amazing and beautiful creation.

I hope some of the classes at Gibraltar Schools are studying the ospreys. It is an absolutely golden learning opportunity to have this nest right across the street from the school! And the birds don’t mind if there are kids out on the playground… the kids can walk right out on the school grounds and watch them with the naked eye.

We were thrilled in college to have a pair of nesting ospreys 2 miles away from our summer camp lodge, that we could watch and journal through a telescope…… sheesh. What we would have given to be able to study ospreys like this!!! :)

###

I’m not sure how many times I’ve mentioned this, but there is one thing that holds true for me: Weborg Marsh never disappoints.

Sunset over Weborg Marsh, Sept 25, 2008

I can drive the whole park and see nothing noteworthy, unusual, particularly special, odd or new (not counting the park’s inherent beauty, of course — and I’m not at all discounting that!), but get at least one treat, for sure, on a drive through Weborg Marsh. It is incredible, the power of that one little spot to deliver.

In however many years I’ve been frequenting the park, I cannot think of the last time Weborg Marsh let me down. I’ve seen everything you can imagine… Bald Eagle, Osprey, Red-Tailed Hawk, this year’s very first … Read the rest of this entry