The Gull and the Osprey

Morning came up out of the Gulf Stream and laid a road of gold across the water, and at the end of that road, on the tallest piling of the Juno Beach Pier, sat an osprey with a fat silver mullet in his talons.

He had earned it. He had folded his wings and fallen out of the sky like a thrown spear, and hit the water so hard the fishermen on the pier said ooooh the way people do at fireworks. Now he stood on his piling, dripping and proud, and prepared to enjoy his breakfast.

Below him, on the rail, landed a gull. The gull had not caught anything that morning. The gull rarely caught anything. The gull’s talent lay elsewhere.

“There he is,” said the gull, loudly, to no one and everyone. “The finest fisher on this whole coast. Did you all see that dive? I’ve watched pelicans my entire life and not one of them ever hit the water like that. The tourists were filming you, you know. You’re famous from here to Jupiter Inlet. They’ll be talking about you at the lighthouse.”

The osprey shifted on his piling. He was a serious bird, but no bird is entirely proof against praise.

“And the cry of an osprey,” the gull went on, shaking his head in wonder. “That whistle, high and wild, like the sky itself calling. They say yours is the finest of all — though I’ve never been lucky enough to hear it up close. I don’t suppose a famous bird has time to sing for an ordinary gull.”

The osprey did not think. He lifted his head, opened his beak, and gave his great ringing cry to the morning —

— and the mullet slipped from his loosened grip, flashed once in the golden light, and dropped. The gull caught it before it touched the water and was gone down the beach, laughing the way gulls do, which is the only song a gull ever needs.

The osprey looked at his empty talons for a long moment. Then he rose, circled once over the pier, and went back to work. He was, after all, the finest fisher on the coast. The gull had been right about that much.