Osprey - 10-16-2005 at 05:37 PM
The Miracle of Imprinting
From my very first encounter with a, martear, needlefish, I thought ?wouldn?t it be great if we could take the slimy coating off the fish, synthesize
it and let the U.S. Navy use it to cover their submarines ? might get another 20 knots out of em?.? These thoughts from trying to arrest the
flopping, flipping beast just long enough to release the hook, throw the fish back into the sea. I suppose it was natural that I thought this
marvelous protective coating evolved to give the animal more speed through the water.
This morning my namesake, the osprey, might have changed my mind. While fishing with bait from the shore I watched a couple of the birds diving and
grabbing, their own special hit and miss method of survival. Both birds had a success rate of about one fish for ten dives. They may have actually
touched a fish on every dive but the slippery skin of the fish, not an errant dive, might have been the reason for such a low catch to dive ratio.
The fish close to shore, the ones I was fishing for, were not hungry. With nothing better to do I played peek a boo and hide and seek with the ghost
crabs near my bait bucket. It was anything but a level playing field. They had a definite advantage ? I had nowhere to hide. Their imprinting, that
most essential automatic response to the sight and sound of a huge old, fat gringo sent them scurrying to their burrows just long enough to count to
100; then they would reappear to keep me playing the game. Well, it was the kind of low-impact, non-contact exercise I enjoy so the morning just sort
of got away from me ? I got back to the house just in time for my nap. Even flushed with the excitement of new discoveries in nature I was able to
force myself to relax and breathe easily. I dropped right off.