Screech

An osprey chick’s screech is like a sparrow’s chirp on steroids, high pitched and incessant. It must drive the parents insane. To say the osprey have made a comeback is an understatement. Sitting at the end of the dock at Rock Hall Landing Marina, I can pinpoint at least four nests — some on the top of telephone poles, others topping the day markers surrounding this odd harbor. The harbor has a large basin but due to the shallowness in the middle, a boat can only navigate the perimeter. We were told that when the harbor was dredged, the spoils were put in the center . . . sounds plausible to me.

Rock Hall is a place that seems to have resisted gentrification. There are a few condominiums around but there is also much free space, and original buildings and businesses. A working fishery still exist and to service it the Rock Hall Marine Railway has a railway in place to remove the fishing fleet in the time tested way before travel lifts were developed.

The restaurants here, like the Waterman’s Café, located just next to our pier, pride themselves on serving freshly caught bay food including but not limited to rockfish, blue crabs, and oysters. Of course, fish names are notoriously fickle, changing as stocks of familiar fish give way to odd sounding substitutes.

The reason for stopping in Rock Hall is that Charlotte had the best rockfish sandwich at the café two years ago on our way south. This and the fact that if we stay two nights the third night is free, which makes the stay here almost financially responsible. The other is that it has a pool, which feels awful good on 90 degree days. It is quiet too, devoid of PWCs and ski boats that seem to inhabit every beautiful cove on the western shore.

So we’ll sit here for a few days, have some fish, walk to town for an ice cream, take the trolley for groceries and booze and maybe swim a few more times . . . and of course watch the osprey chicks play out their infancy and adolescence with increasing louder screeches!!