As we watch the slowly melting snow that has accumulated during our unusually harsh winter, it occurs to us that our ospreys, Ralph and Alice, will soon return from their winter migration.
Spring at Potomac Tides starts on the day our nesting pair returns from their winter migration. It's an occasion marked both by joy and a sense of relief that our pair has survived another hazardous migration. It's a migration that carries them from Southern Maryland down the east coast to Florida, over to Cuba for a brief rest stop, and then perhaps to other Caribbean islands further south. We don't know if our pair then spends the rest of winter in the Caribbean or if, like most other east coast ospreys, they continue on across the Caribbean to Venezuela and then on to any number of locations on the South American continent. If they are like most ospreys, our pair separates and does not winter together. Wherever their individual wintering locations may be, they are likely just as faithful to those spots in the Caribbean or South America as they are to their nesting platform adjacent to our dock in the Potomac.
To complete their migration, ospreys fly hundreds of miles over open water twice a year, and they do it on an astonishingly regular schedule. Over the past nine years, with two exceptions, our pair has returned on March 10th -- ten days before the first day of spring on March 20th - at least that is when we have first observed them. In 2005, Ralph arrived a week early. In 2007, both showed up on the 11th instead of the 10th, but in 2007 the first day of spring was a day later on March 21st, so they still showed up 10 days before the first day of spring.
This annual sojourn -- this natural metronome that has clicked away the seasons, years, and centuries, always makes me reflect back to a time when humans did not inhabit the Potomac's shores. I can see the ospreys, the deer, the fish and all of our other neighbors following their instinctive paths as human beings have come and gone, fought, farmed, played, driven species to extinction or near extinction, and changed the face of the land. The metronome continues to tick, and I imagine a future where technology, governments, and the affairs of human beings - if they're still around - are far different than they are today - yet the ospreys remain unchanged, following their instinctive path. That is what so fascinates me about these birds: in addition to my respect and admiration for them as magnificent birds of prey, they are a Michenerian arrow of time that carries me away from life's complexities, and for a moment, invites my spirit to soar on the wings of an osprey...
Click here to see more pictures of our ospreys and other birds.
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