Mendocino’s kings and queens of the skies return for spring lovings and sushi

0 274 3 minutes read

Mendocino’s kings and queens of the skies return for spring lovings and sushi

Brutus and I have two new friends in Caspar. George and Gracie the ospreys. A young couple that just moved into their parent’s massive treetop nest house. They were calling to each other as one stayed at the nest and the other flew off and brought back stuffing for the nest. Ospreys are literally coming home in many cases. They are taking up nests that they and their parents and grandparents may have worked on. Osprey, sometimes called seahawks or fish eagles, are neither hawk nor eagle in reality, they are ospreys. They are known to be better at catching fish than hawks, who have to use their beaks to do so. Ospreys have two backwards toes that aid in catching fish on the fly. One scientific study found that the osprey he studied caught a fish in an average time of 12 minutes. (That’s about as much time as I spend untangling my line before my first case). Eagles also use their feet to catch fish, but aren’t quite as nimble as osprey. Eagles, ravens and other birds will often watch an osprey catch fish, then plot to steal the prize.

All of this really did happen in the space of an hour right by George and Gracie’s nest. The moon came up behind the tree next to theirs, or at least from my angle.

Osprey have never feared humans much, making them one of the most successful of raptors till after World War II. In the 1950s-1972 osprey numbers, along with other heavy birds like the pelicans and bald eagles, plummeted due to the use of the pesticide DDT, which made bird egg shells paper thin. With big birds, sitting on the nest meant broken eggs. DDT hits the birds at the top of the food chain the hardest, as it concentrates in the bodies of insects, then whatever eats the insect, all the way up. The fish that pelicans and osprey ate were loaded with the pesticide. Banned in 1972, osprey numbers started to climb again.

Osprey were decimated in the Central Valley, where lots of DDT was used. Many osprey, like the Pomo and Yuki peoples of old, would winter over the hill and dine on the bounty of the sea in spring and summer.

While osprey can be seen here year round, scientific studies I found say these couples migrate here, most often from Central and South America! Some come from California’s Central Valley. Mexico and Chico! The same places the people come from who love Fort Bragg!

I LOVED to hear the sound of osprey when I had my big chicken farm by the sea. All the other chicken-eating hawks would run away when the osprey flew over. And the osprey doesn’t eat chickens. They will snatch a rat now and then or a rabbit, but seem to eschew eating other birds.

Osprey mate for life and will often return to the same nest year after year, meeting there like two lovers returning to the Heritage House. When they get back together at the nest, they will often air dance in joy. These two didn’t do that. He seemed to be bringing seaweed or lichen to the nest. Being a poultry man I can tell they were making joyful cries to each other. She would yell for him each time he flew off then he would give a yell upon return and they would sit together in the nest. While osprey are usually the baddest bird in Mendocino County, a biologist told me that osprey up 10 mile River had to find a new nest when a pair of bald eagles came and kicked them out.

There is always somebody bigger and badder than you.

In Sonoma County, the Department of Fish and Wildlife documented a bobcat climbing the tree and eating one of the parents on the nest.

This was certainly a couple. I couldn’t tell which was the wife and which the husband, so I picked George as the one bringing the seaweed and stuffing for the nest and then falling asleep while Gracie was talking.

I wrote a dialogue for them

George, you are not sleeping while our nest is unfinished are you?