One day last summer the osprey nest was suddenly
gone; it looked cleanly swept from the platform at the top of the tower at the
local park. I decided that a park
official must have come in the middle of the night - to avoid being caught by
those of us who care about the wildlife who take good advantage of human
constructions - to remove the ospreys' home. This had been the place where
several eggs were nurtured, hatched; babies fed; osprey-ettes fledged. Somehow
this idea struck me and became rooted
deep within my mind. It became real. True.
And I began to build a very large resentment against the park employees. I had
absolutely no evidence that this had occurred; all I knew is that the huge nest
of large twigs - built at the top of the tower on which someone painted the
word "DREAM" - was there one day and completely gone the next. I do
not recall any terrific windstorms or anything else between those two days that might have accounted
for the disappearance of the nest.
I mourned the loss of that terrific sight: two mature osprey flying in turns over the top
of the nest, across the small open expanse of parkland sky nestled between
thick Pacific Northwest forest patches, homes, a hiking trail, roads. I mourned
the loss of those babies’ heads, bobbing up and down over the top of the nest,
barely visible from my low-ground perch. I sighed in sadness as all evidence of
the osprey family was gone. I remembered with a bittersweet-ness all that had
occurred in the osprey home, now destroyed. I could also hear in my mind's ear
the sharp call of the birds, one parent across the park from the nest, until
they would - at last - dance on wings in the sky before switching places on the
nest.
This year as the springtime began to bloom at the
park, I kept watch on the top of the tower. Nothing for weeks. Not a single
stick, not one osprey overhead. A single screeching call is all I needed. But
there was none.
Then three weeks ago I heard it: the whistling announcement of an osprey! And
up above my head, hard to see in the rare and stunning sunshine, was an osprey
giddily moving across the park. My eyes shot up to the platform above the tower
and there I saw a few sticks, raggedly hanging off the edges of the several
foot square perch. Ah! The ospreys have
returned. Prevailed, even. My resentment at the park officials turned into awe
at the resilience and memory of those ospreys. Two appeared. One on the tower,
one in flight.
A few days after first spotting their nest this
spring, I deliberately chose against a wilder hike, a more remote jaunting
place for my dog and me. I chose, instead, to return to the city-like park
(grassy play fields, a children's playground with climbing toys and an oversized
xylophone). I went in search of those ospreys. I saw the nest-in-progress, more
sticks hanging messily over the edge of the platform. And I mistook the
activity up there for a well-built nest. As I rounded the final bend on the
journey my dog likes to take (in search of "chase-ables" - rabbits,
ground squirrels, other dogs, geese), I heard a loud clanging sound that
alerted me to a stick falling to the ground below the ospreys’ platform home.
Nothing could stop my inquisitiveness; I headed straight to the grass beneath
the tower and was surprised to see huge twigs all over the ground. Many were
over two feet long and two inches in diameter; these must be the ones the
osprey dropped, that fell off the tower as she began to construct this year’s
nesting site. The attrition rate for an unbuilt nest. As I looked up at the
grated platform, I could see that the nest was still largely non-existent. All
that was there were a random scattering of sticks, a first layer not yet
intact.
I called then to the osprey who stood up there; I
wished him luck in building the nest. I commended her ability to carry such
heavy, long sticks. And off I went back to my own small home, satisfied that
the ospreys had returned, still unsure whether my made-up story about the park officials’ destruction - in the name of saving
the cell tower platform from the wilds of nature – was myth or fact. It did
remind me, though, that my brain is an active and crazy place…not always
commensurate with outer reality or facts.
My story’s authenticity
now does not matter to me; the ospreys’ return really does.
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
