WHEN Steve and Joan Beauch returned from a short vacation recently, they found an unexpected visitor in the street in front of their Widewater home.

"A dazed-looking, but magnificent, osprey was in the street in front of our house on Aquia Creek," said Joan Beauch. "We live at the end of a dead-end street, so we left the bird there and went into our house to unpack from our trip, planning to check on him later."

Little did they know that the bird would take them through an anxious day and night as they tried to figure out how to get help for this nimble flier watermen refer to as a fish hawk.

After unpacking, the Stafford County couple took a closer look and found a weak and dazed osprey, with no obvious injuries but a drooping left wing.

"Even in this weakened condition, he was still a large, ferocious-looking raptor, so I kept a respectful distance," said Beauch. "I phoned several different sources to see if someone could come to rescue this magnificent bird and give him the medical attention he required."

Her calls produced no answers, as most offices were closed on that Sunday.

"One rehabber advised me to put him into a box and deliver him to a rehab center, while another suggested I throw a sheet over the bird to contain him," said Beauch. "He looked very menacing, and I wasn't about to get that close."

Unfortunately, she said, doing nothing became a problem.

"A fox approached him, hoping for a quick meal," said Beauch.

While the bird sent the fox running with its tail between its legs, its attempts to get off the ground resulted in short hops with crash landings.

Eventually the osprey began to limp from the street into their yard, dragging its left wing as it came.

"I kept returning to talk softly to him," Beauch said.

She also protected the bird, wildly swinging a broom to chase away vultures.

As the bird was hobbling into the yard, Beauch said, several ospreys perched on a nearby boat lift on Aquia Creek called out to it.