The ospreys are gone. They left in the weeks after Labor Day.
When they get the call – genetic or atmospheric - they don’t delay, it’s a long way to Central America and even longer to Brazil.
The male goes first, soon after the female follows, sometimes accompanied by her grown chicks, although the young ospreys seem to know the route and destination regardless.
Ospreys mate for life but they travel separately. The male arrives in Connecticut coastal areas soon after St. Patrick’s Day.
Having secured last year’s nest, he will fish just enough for personal sustenance. Mamma will arrive in a week or so, and dictate just how she wants the nest to look and feel; she doesn’t hesitate to discard any twig or other building material the male may offer, if not to her liking.
After mating she will take to the nest and lay up to three eggs. Poppa’s hard slog then begins. He must feed her, and himself, and as soon as the eggs are hatched, he is the main provider for roughly fifty days until the young can hunt successfully.
July and August are a treat for those who pay close attention. Where once the male dived alone, now the full family of five (if they’ve survived predators or illness) display their skills, swooping down on unsuspecting fish.
The first days of hunting for the young provide moments of hilarity, as a swift, seemingly confident dive may lead to an ungainly belly flop. But they learn quickly, out on the placid Long Island Sound.
There’s a clock ticking down to Labor Day. The young have a flight of thousands of miles ahead. Do they have any notion of this, or is it something genetic that drives them on to their winter home in Central America.
I’ve been watching ospreys for some time. I began soon after 9/11. I guess that event caused many people to take stock of their surroundings. At first, sightings were rare, but around 2015 - the first summer after Black 47 disbanded - I noticed a jump in their numbers.
I was working on a novel then and making slow progress. Novels are hard to write and the work is draining. I began rising at 6 a.m. and took solace in looking up from my laptop every few minutes for sight of the male as he circled the bay, pausing as hawks do in mid-air to scan the waters below.
I began to synchronize with him. If he dove and succeeded in clawing a fish, then I’d get a rush of adrenalin and finish a difficult sentence or paragraph. He failed often that first month, as did I. But as the summer wore on we both improved.
It took three summers of synchronizing with the male before I finished "Rockaway Blue."
He returned the following spring in those first awful weeks of the pandemic. He seemed unfazed by all our fears and paranoia.
I wouldn’t say ospreys are methodical, they’re far too skillful and opportunistic, but there was work to be done, and my old friend set about it in his usual driven manner.
I followed his example, as best I could, and began "All The Rage," a musical about the Rock ‘n’ Roll life in the East Village, the score of which I finally recorded last week.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t make it back this year, the male who now rules the roost in these waters has stripes on his belly, whereas my co-worker’s under-plumage was white as snow.
I mourned him for a while, but then rationalized that the new male is the son of my old friend, and life must go on.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
I had been saving a project called "Rebel Girl" for the return of the ospreys in late March. It’s the story of the firebrand labor activist, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. She was from The Bronx and gave her first public speech for workers rights when she was 15.
So, when mourning was over, I dove in. Stripe Belly has more energy than my old friend. I hadn’t noticed that he’d gotten slower with age.
Anyway, my young associate suits the drama and drive of Ms. Flynn, the songs and story already have an odd vibrancy. Hopefully, I’ll have the project ready for the long final polishing by the time my new friend returns in the spring.
