Osprey

Down by the cove, late afternoon, low tide. This tidal cove is ringed by sea grass, pink granite boulders and dark firs. The cove is small and secluded, with a shallow mud bottom. It’s dead low tide now, but the water is moving. Tidal water is always moving, there is never a moment of stillness, equilibrium. There’s always a tiny trickle of glitter, threading its way across the flats.
The tide has just turned, and the water is slowly filling up the cove, moving in across the flats and forming wide shallow pool. Erratic jets of water shoot up suddenly and sporadically from the mud, in syncopated rhthyms: buried clams, feeling suddenly festive, or greedy, or who knows what.
An osprey comes in, flying low over the water. They like low tide better than high: the prey is visible, and close to the surface. This one flaps up to the top of a dead tree on the far side of the cove. Ospreys flap their wings more often than gulls do. They have shorter necks, and they look down as they fly. This means that gulls, those loud, common scavengers of offal, actually are more stately in flight, with their long necks, high heads, and slow majestic movements.
The osprey (male, I think) settles onto the dead tree at the mouth of the cove. The tree is tall and silvery, stripped of all its bark. It shines in the afternoon light, and it makes a perfect camouflage for the osprey, whose white chest looks into the tree, and whose dark back blends into the dark firs behind him.
The osprey spreads his wings, revealing the pale undersides, showing off. He closes them again and settles down, moving about on his perch. He looks around at the cove, on the alert. He shifts from foot to foot, then suddenly leans forward, raising his tail high and releasing a white liquid ribbon from beneath it, which slides down through the dark air.
The osprey looks about boldly, his head now high. His eyes are fierce and piratical, with low intolerant brows. On his cheek is a black racing stripe. His chest is white, his wings and back mottled black. He lowers his head, reaching down to the branch he’s on. The top of his head is patterned with two white diamonds, side by side, meeting at the middle, surrounded by black. Very elegant, and rather Venetian.
He’s got something there, on the branch, or held in his claws. His head lowers to it, and then his head twists, neatly and precisely, as though he were opening a bottle. He raises his head again, looks around, then lowers it for another neat, ruthless swivel. There’s something at his feet, though it’s too far away to make out – something mauled and bloody. The osprey sits still, lowering his dominoed head for another twist, then raising it again to survey his territory with a fierce stare.
In the cove below, the water moves silently, swirling with the incoming tide, deepening the pools. A huge dragonfly, backlit by the lowering sun, rises suddenly and swiftly over the ater, then wheels, drops again, and vanishes into the glowing, transparent darkness.