Sharing the Sea’s Bounty, by Terry Sullivan

It was spring along the East End beaches of Long Island. The striped bass moved along the rolling surf, driven to follow all the baitfish before them as they had when no humans were around to remember. They were followed by the gannets and the ospreys diving from above, feasting on the baitfish pushed to the roiling surface by the bass and bluefish.

The humans joined in to play their part in this epic opera at the shore whose score is the constant thrumping, hissing, and roaring of the waves. The libretto being the briny palaver supplied by the human fishing crew vying to make a meal out of the monumental scenery of the sea. That talk is often nod and grunt, as one’s focus is on naught but the loop of line, the pop of lure, and smooth retrieving by the reel — and breathe and point and once again repeat, the loop of line . . .

This particular day a few of my fishy friends and I were kept at the suds until late morning by the frequency of the fish we were relentlessly hooking. “One more cast, one more cast” was repeated down the beach until the last of the hard-core fishers stood in a pleasant trance, popping the lure out into the deep and back again.

(The popping plug is a tubular lure with a concave nose that makes a little splash in the surf with every pulse of the rod, attracting bigger fish, hopefully fooling them into biting what looks like a smaller fish.)

Out of the cloudless sky an osprey appeared, hovering 50 feet above my lure, flapping his six-foot wingspan. He then broke into a high-speed dive, wings folded back, gaining on my splashing popping plug, fooled into thinking it was one of those smaller fish. Just before the osprey hit the water, and my lure, I yanked it forward out of his grasping talons as he swooped away only to position himself once more, soaring, then hovering in the constant offshore breeze over my pulsing lure below.

“Alex,” I yelled. “Check out this osprey!” One of my fellow fishers was 40 feet east of me. “He’s diving on my lure!” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Alex replied, focused on nothing but his line and his lure. 

The second dive came quicker as I was distracted trying to distract Alex, and the osprey was within feet as I yanked the popper from its open talons still dripping from skimming the surface. His third attempt was so halfhearted even Alex yelled out, “What the . . .!” as the osprey flew over my lure yanked from him once again.

Minutes more of “one more cast” passed, and the osprey took up gliding over Alex’s lure — he was not distracted by all the fellow fishers calling out to warn him. Once again the determined osprey went for the lure, and as his talons closed around it Alex yanked the line too late and set the hook in the big bird’s foot.

The panicked osprey flew ashore and over Alex as he tried to bring it back to the beach. It reached the other end of the Scott Cameron Beach parking lot and started back. Not stopping for Alex below, it headed out to sea, where it dropped in the drink exhausted from the fight. Alex quickly pulled him through the breakers and dragged him up to the wrack and tide line.

A large towel was draped over the whole bird as we tried to stabilize it and free it from the lure. I had my left hand firmly but gently on the back of his neck and my right hand flat on his back while the other two fishers had his wings. The “V” of the fishing pliers that every fisherman carries snipped off the hook’s barbed end and the hook slid easily off, freeing our determined bird from the metal talons of the lure.

We were about to free the bird when a rogue wave lifted him and the towel and shifted our grip on him. Seeing that the razor-sharp beak had now moved to within a quarter of an inch of my thumb, I quickly readjusted my grip to the nape of his neck and the square of his back, gently holding him to the sand once again. We all looked at each other and counted, “Okay, on 1,2,3, lift!” 

The towel off, the osprey turned slowly and stood up in one careful motion, eyeing all of us, shaking off the sand and water and at least part of the humiliation. He shook once more, getting enough flutter in his wings to feel the air going through them. Then giving us all his best predator “hairy eyeball” glare, he seemed to say, “What the heck was that about?” 

He took two steps back and flapped those muscular wings in a quick liftoff, banking up and away seaward, leaving us astounded on the strand.

Excerpted from Terry Sullivan’s “My Sag Harbor Bird Notebook,” published by Empire Science Resources.