A reader phoned the office around March 8 to report that the first osprey had arrived at a nest near the Halsey farm stand in Water Mill. Amid our collective addictions to our phones and screens, it is comforting that we also can find a spark of wonder in the natural world. We welcomed the call.
Americans spend about four hours a day looking at their phones, and the younger one is the more one will be on a screen. In studies, adolescents have been found to spend up to 14 hours a day engaged by social media or games. But reliably each year, the osprey come back and we notice. In conversations at work we tell one another what we have seen so far. We call the newspaper.
When you think about it, the osprey is a kind of modern-day phoenix, risen from the ashes of near-extermination by an earlier generation’s liberal application of the pesticide DDT, which affected their eggs. In 1948, there were 300 nests on Long Island, with an average of two osprey chicks fledging each year. That fell to 50 nests by 1966 and got worse from there. Since 1972, when the use of DDT was banned in the United States, the osprey has made a strong recovery to the point that the bird now seems to be everywhere.
As signs of the coming spring, osprey are beloved here, but there is more to it — we are inspired by their prodigious migrations, and their annual return reminds us that the Earth continues in its wobbling orbit and, if we are careful, we will be around to see the osprey come back time and again.