Oct 24, 2009 – Osprey catching a fish in Finland – Juan Carlos Munoz / Photolibrary
- What controversial, super-high-tech aircraft is named after this bird?
It’s like a plane and a helicopter in one - DDT nearly wiped out these fierce creatures, but they’re making a strong comeback.
Check out their ferocious-looking babies - This bird breeds on every continent except South America and Antarctica.
What is it? - It’s no surprise that this particular bird would hang out here, in a land renowned for its natural beauty.
Where is it?
Osprey
The Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), sometimes known as the sea hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey. It is a large raptor, reaching 60 centimetres (24 in) in length with a 1.8 metre (6 ft) wingspan. It is brown on the upperparts and predominantly greyish on the head and underparts, with a black eye patch and wings.
The Osprey tolerates a wide variety of habitats, nesting in any location near a body of water providing an adequate food supply. It is found on all continents except Antarctica although in South America it occurs only as a non-breeding migrant.
As its other common name suggests, the Osprey’s diet consists almost exclusively of fish. It has evolved specialised physical characteristics and exhibits unique behaviour to assist in hunting and catching prey. As a result of these unique characteristics, it has been given its own taxonomic genus, Pandion and family, Pandionidae. Four subspecies are usually recognised. Despite its propensity to nest near water, the Osprey is not a sea-eagle.
Taxonomy
The Osprey was one of the many species described by Carolus Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae, and named as Falco haliaeetus. The genus Pandion was described by the French zoologist Marie Jules César Savigny in 1809.
The Osprey differs in several respects from other diurnal birds of prey. Its toes are of equal length, its tarsi are reticulate, and its talons are rounded, rather than grooved. The Osprey is the only raptor whose outer toe is reversible, allowing it to grasp its prey with two toes in front and two behind. It has always presented something of a riddle to taxonomists, but here it is treated as the sole member of the family Pandionidae, and the family listed in its traditional place as part of the order Falconiformes. Other schemes place it alongside the hawks and eagles in the family Accipitridae—which itself can be regarded as making up the bulk of the order Accipitriformes or else be lumped with the Falconidae into Falconiformes. The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy has placed it together with the other diurnal raptors in a greatly enlarged Ciconiiformes, but this results in an unnatural paraphyletic classification.
