Saint Patrick, patron saint of osprey

Well, we're counting down to the “Great Saint's” feast day. Yes, March 17, and while St. Pat is celebrated for ridding Ireland of serpents (a myth, by the way), his feast day has assumed a different significance in my mind. I celebrate St. Paddy’s Day because it marks the return of the osprey to our shores.

- PETE DUNNE

On or about March 17, the first osprey return to Maine, after their six-month sojourn to the Amazon Basin. Linda and I, like osprey, are summer residents. From our winter retreat in California, we are counting down the days until we cross “the bridge,” look up and see how many osprey nests occupy the support towers, and then, whether the causeway nest is occupied this year.

Ten minutes later, we'll be drawing up to our kitchen door and sussing out the state of the property. Will the dead birches survive the winter? Are the lupines blooming? The resident chickadees and woodpeckers, seeing our car, will head for the gnarled apple tree in anticipation of the bird feeders that its branches will soon support. But year after year, the sound that rings in our return is the piping whistle of osprey, which last year even started constructing a nest on our chimney. Sorry, birds, we use that chimney. Go find a tree.