Watch for Ospreys high above

A few days ago, a friend reported seeing an Osprey flying over a store at the lower end of Main Street, and she wondered if I had seen it, too. I had not, but while chatting with her I recalled other times I had seen Ospreys. One of my favorite memories was from years ago, when we had driven over to the coast to visit my brother and sister-in-law, who were vacationing on the saltwater cove where we had spent our childhood summers. As we swam in the cold buoyant salt water that day, delighting in the aroma and taste of the sea, and enjoying small floating mats of rockweed that gently caressed our arms, I recalled summer days of my childhood in that same cove. Those were magical times when my friends and I draped long tresses of rockweed over our heads and floating capes of rockweed over our shoulders, transforming ourselves from human children into mermaids. 

As we enjoyed lunch on the cottage’s stone terrace with my brother and sister-in-law, we looked out through the tops of the pine trees to the cove below, and beyond it to the bay. The incoming tide broke rhythmically over the ledges off the point, and Herring Gulls swept past us on the wind. The pair of Ospreys that nested every year on the wooded hillside above the cove circled overhead, calling “kyew, kyew, kyew” in their shrill high voices, and in his talons, held headfirst to be more aerodynamic, the male Osprey carried a large mackerel.