BRDL 21

 2/13/22 - OSPR - Osprey

Now this is a bird that I have seen and heard. I most recently associate it with a week long trip to Cape Cod when we were escaping the pandemic. There were loads of nesting platforms and you could hear their whistling calls throughout the day. I have seen them plenty of other places as well -- anywhere there is water nearby, you may see them (although they need relatively shallow water to hunt their fish -- they dive no more than 3 feet to catch their prey. 

It's not uncommon to see osprey flying away with a catch in their talons. They are unusual in that they have a toe that they can move so that they have two toes in front and two behind. And when they carry away their fish, they always carry the fish headfirst, for aerodynamics.

Etymology of the name osprey is interesting -- either it's from the medieval Latin avis prede, meaning 'bird of prey', or else it's from the Latin ossifraga meaning 'bone-breaker'. It seems that ossifraga was actually used by Pliny in Latin to mean a certain kind of vulture, but may have been confused with another French word when it evolved in Normandy, and got applied to the osprey. Then the scientific name is interesting - Pandion haliaetus - given presumably by Linnaeus when he classified everything in the 17th century. Pandion apparently refers to an Athenian king, whose children were turned into birds at death, one of whom (Nisus) became an (you guessed it ) osprey.

That's enough word-nerding around. Last thing I found interesting -- this bird is found all around the world, but the species are pretty hard to differentiate. It seems that the populations that winter in Scandinavia migrate over to India in the winter. I love these migration maps from eBird.