The unsubtle fish hawk

A rumpled-looking osprey complains, high and keening, from the top limb of a Bishop pine. I stop for a while to watch while it sits upright and stately. Black pirate band around its eyes, proud snowy chest. The cries it makes seem too small to come from the large dark bill, wickedly curved like the fishhook it is.

These large birds of prey are common in the huckleberry hills above Tomales Bay these days; they also are easy to see. I find osprey to be unsubtle birds, especially near their nests. Their cry is distinctive – surprisingly squeaky, reminiscent of a child’s whine – and they aren’t quiet when intruders are near. Generally I wouldn’t notice them if they didn’t alert me, with their calls, to look around for a tangle of twigs in a snag.

Half a century ago, seeing even one osprey would have been a treat. The birds were rare and in decline, likely as a result of DDT and other pesticides and human pressures. They were listed as “very rare” in bird records from the Point Reyes area as early as the 1930s, according to local naturalist Jules Evans. Even when I was a child, growing up thirty miles north of here in the mid-80s, it was a big deal to have one of the infamous “fish hawks” successfully hatch its young in a Doug fir below our garden.

Today, the birds’ status is generally listed as “least concern.” There are as many as 500,000 of them and they’re found on every continent except Antarctica. Locally, they nest in a colony at Kent Lake as well as in increasingly common solo spots.

I think about this and walk on. A few hundred feet down the red dirt trail, I pass the nest. No downy heads are visible, but I bet they’re there – waiting to grow up, stretch their 5-foot wings and raise a shrill cry of their own.