As we work in our Florida home office/studio these spring days, my artist husband and I listen to the screech of a young osprey flying over our condo complex.
This is a time of the year we've come to treasure as osprey parents occasionally move off their nests - set atop the tall lamps of neighborhood tennis courts across the street - to perch on a branch of a tree by our third-floor condo and nonchalantly groom or just kickback as their young take their first forays into the sky.
These are the same parents who for weeks had hunted what seemed to be continuously to feed their young before they were mature enough to set out from the nest and learn to fly. The parents returned to their nests with feasts - such as dazed snake dangling from their talons - to silence those babes who were peeping hungry, hungry, hungry.
A raptor parent's flight is ever silent, powerful and purposeful. To us, screeching newbies learning to fly sound a bit panicked. Or, maybe boasting, a continuous, "Look at me, Mom!" as their clarion call. Either way, to see them repeatedly try is divine comedy, the frantic flapping, the dropping like stones when they paused, the scheduled and unscheduled landings on this or that tree, then taking off again with a new round of flapping before they one day grasp the concept of letting a wind current do some heavy lifting. It seemed almost an "Aha" moment when they did glide on a current, and we responded with, "That's the trick, kiddo!"
With nine years of observation, we know the screeching fades day by day. The parents preen longer in our tree across from the tennis courts, ignoring any attempts at our chummy trans-species communication.
One day last year, as we bobbed in the condo pool, five osprey of all sizes appeared above the buildings and flew over the four-acre courtyard, forming a squadron, dipping and soaring in all directions with their impressive wing spans. It was a season's grand finale and dramatic display of flight. The days warmed. Our raptors were gone.
When we drive north to share the cooler climes with them, it is tempting to scout for osprey in flight and perched on towering poles along the Atlantic coast and wonder if they are ours - from our tree, our sky, our season. We think theirs is a special passage, and we equate it with all childhood- parenthood passages.
Yet, we never saw an osprey parent wringing its talons and fretting over outcomes of a day's flight lesson. Wish humans had the sense of an osprey to kick back while our children learned what they had to learn to succeed in life. Not much good for baby ospreys to know their parents can fly. Ultimately, everybody's got to fend for themselves. It would be comforting to have the wisdom to know when that moment has come. Nature teaches us if we will watch and listen - if for no other reason than sheer joy.
Osprey relaxing as their young try their wings