Today is the day!!
I biked to work this morning on a stealth mission to retrieve my work computer and a few other worky things I hadn’t thought to bring home with me the last time I was in the office (gotta love impromptu working from home). That was pretty exciting itself, since I’ve been missing my bike ride up to Vancouver. But the MORE exciting thing is that just as I was crossing back into Oregon, work computer and necessary papers safely stashed in my bag, something caught my eye.
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(Osprey!! Picture by the lovely Art Clausing)
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For the last week or so as I bike around I’ve been keeping a lookout for osprey — now is about the time they start showing up here again from their winter homes, mostly in Mexico. And I’m always curious where the first one I see is going to be. It’s often by the Sellwood Park nest (probably in large part because that’s the closest to my house/the one I go check out most often) but last year was the nest along the Columbia River Slough, and I think one year was way up along Marine Drive.
Anyway, as I was crossing back into Oregon on my way home this morning, with osprey not on my mind at all because I was stewing in a shitty email I’d just gotten, I looked over — and there was an osprey! He had a big old stick in his talons and was just taking off near the Target on Hayden Island.
OMG!! I pulled over and watched him fly, all the way back to where he’s sprucing up a nest. A nest I’d never even seen before! Not only did I see my first osprey of the season, but he helped me discover a brand new-to-me nest! Best thing ever!
The shitty email was immediately forgotten, and I decided to take the long way home to visit all the other nearby nests I know about to see if anyone was home in those. The answer was yes, maybe — there was definitely an osprey-like bird on the Slough nest (which I’d somehow totally missed on my way up to my office), but that one’s further away and I didn’t have my binoculars with me, so we’ll call that a 90% chance of osprey ;)
YAY!!
The human world is a bit of a shit-show right now, but at least the osprey are still coming home:) (summer home, anyway;)
Welcome back, osprey!