Osprey in flight – Jan 02, 2013
After weeks of failed attempts I finally captured an image of our visiting osprey.
These birds of prey live almost exclusively on a diet of live fish, and are also called sea hawks, or fish hawks. They dive for their prey going as deep as three feet below the water’s surface, and they are good at what they do. One study reported by Cornell Lab of Ornithology showed that the Osprey caught fish at least one in every four dives, and the average time spent hunting before making a catch was only about 12 minutes. I don’t know if our visitor can brag about such statistics, but he has bagged dinner on multiple occasions, judging from the binocular views we’ve witnessed.
The osprey is also a migratory bird. It can log more than 160,000 migration miles during a lifetime. One, fitted with a tracking device, was reported to have traveled more than 2,700 miles in a 13 day period – from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts to French Guiana, South America.
That makes me wonder just where this guy has been, or where he might be headed. To me, it gives the term “free as a bird” a whole, new meaning.