File:Osprey With Nest Material (13600368084).jpg

There is an osprey nest on a protected island just off the shore in Wolfe's Neck State Park in nearby Freeport, Maine. Generally the older and stronger males return first after wintering in the south. I watched this guy making some spring repairs to the nest, Even with a 300 mm lens I had to enlarge this almost 1:1 to get this and the direction of the sun was not great. There is another photo of him flying from the nest.

Osprey Lore

Nisos, a king of Megara in Greek mythology, became a sea eagle or Osprey, to attack his daughter after she fell in love with Minos, king of Crete. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder reported that parent Ospreys made their young fly up to the sun as a test, and dispatch any that failed. Another odd legend regarding this fish-eating bird of prey, derived from the writings of Albertus Magnus and recorded in Holinshed's Chronicles, was that it had one webbed foot and one taloned foot. There was a medieval belief that fish were so mesmerised by the Osprey that they turned belly-up in surrender, and this is referenced by Shakespeare in Act 4 Scene 5 of Coriolanus:

   I think he'll be to Rome
   As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
   By sovereignty of nature.

In Buddhism, the Osprey is sometimes represented as the "King of Birds", especially in the 'The Jātaka: Or, Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births' , no.486.