The Osprey on the Post

This morning as I was riding to work, I passed by the large intertidal area just south of the Causeway. It is an area filled with mangroves and salt loving plants with exotic sounding names like Salicornia, Borrichia and Batis. The wind was from the northwest, and there was a feeling of something in the air. Further west the bay glimmered sparkling blue as little whitecaps began to form on its otherwise placid and expressionless surface.

I ride this way almost everyday. During times of big tides, when the water laps around the prop roots of the mangroves, tiny shorebirds; plovers, killdeer and Dunlin forage along the margins of the wetlands while secretive night heron peer from behind the foliage, oblivious to the traffic speeding over the bridge, on the ribbon of blacktop, well on their way to another day of work, people just filling in time before they die.

I always pass the “for sale” sign planted out there, advertising this acreage as prime real estate, and to contact so-and-so reality company for more information. Someday probably, someone will buy this piece of land. They’ll fight and wrestle with the various agencies who administer the regulations which make it difficult for any self respecting developer to “improve” this wetland he now owns, and if and when they finally get their appropriate permits, gleaming buildings will rise up out of the primordial muck, like giant excavated fiddler crab burrows and docks and piers will jut defiantly out into the bay and the developers, investors, buyers and town fathers will all grin a smug self satisfied grin, satisfied in the knowledge that they have “improved” this formerly worthless piece of real estate.

Today I saw an Osprey sitting on an old broken post in a clearing in the middle of the mangroves, watching the water which had inundated the area because of a recent storm far up the coast, watching for mullet or other small fish to prey on. I see this same bird often, sitting on his perch. This is his sanctuary, his kitchen, dining and living room. When the “improvements” inevitably come, he’ll simply fly off and occupy another space, until that one inevitably gets improved, until inevitably, there are few sanctuaries left, and those that do remain will be far back in areas that are worthless pieces of real estate, waiting patiently for the chance to someday be “improved”.

Undoubtedly it will be an area filled with Mangroves and plants with exotic sounding names like Salicornia, Borrichia and Batis. Little plovers, killdeer and dunlin will work along the shoreline, bills bobbing and dipping, foraging like miniature sewing machines, and night herons will peer secretively through the foliage at the whole scene, oblivious to the relentless march of civilization.