OSPREY, or OSPRAY

This article appears in Volume V20, Page 353 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: ORC-PAI

OSPREY, or OSPRAY , a word said to be corrupted from " Ossifrage," Lat. ossifraga, bone-breaker. The Ossifraga of Pliny (H.N. x. 3) and some other classical writers seems to have
XX. I2been the Lammergeyer (q.v.); but the name, not inapplicable in that case, has been transferred to another bird which is no breaker of bones, save incidentally those of the fishes it devours.1 The osprey is a rapacious bird; of middling size and of conspicuously-marked plumage, the white of its lower parts, and often of its head, contrasting sharply with the dark brown of the back and most of its upper parts when the bird is seen on the wing. It is the Falco haliaelus of Linnaeus, but was, in 181o, established by J. C. Savigny (Ois. de l'Egypte, p. 35) as the type of a new genus Pandion. It is closely related to the family Falconidae, but is the representative of a separate family, Pandionidae. Pandion differs from the Falconidae not only pterylologically, as observed by C. L. Nitzsch, but also osteologically, as pointed out by A. Milne-Edwards (Ois. foss. France, ii. pp. 413, 419). In some of the characters in which it differs structurally from the Falconidae, it agrees with certain of the owls; but the most important parts of its internal structure, as well as of its pterylosis, forbid a belief that there is any near alliance of the two groups. The

special

SPECIAL

characters of the family are the presence of a reversible outer toe, the absence of an aftershaft and the feathering of the tibiae.
The osprey is one of the most cosmopolitan birds-of-prey. From Alaska to Brazil, from

Lapland

LAPLAND, or LAPPLAND

Natal

NATAL

, from Japan to Tasmania, and in some of the islands of the Pacific, it occurs as a winter-visitant or as a

resident

RESIDENT

. Though migratory in Europe at least, it is generally independent of climate. It breeds equally on the half-thawed shores of Hudson's Bay and on the cays of Honduras, in the dense forests of Finland and on the barren rocks of the Red Sea, in Kamchatka and in West Australia. Among the countries it does not frequent are Iceland and New Zealand. Where, through abundance of food, it is numerousas in former days was the case in the eastern part of the United Statesthe nests of the fish-hawk (to use its American name) may be placed on trees to the number of three hundred close together. Where food is scarcer and the species accordingly less plentiful, a single pair will occupy an isolated

rock

, and jealously expel all intruders of their kind, as happens in

Scotland

.2 Few birds lay eggs so beautiful or so rich in colouring: their white or

pale

PALE (through Fr. pal, from Lat. palms, a stake, for paglus, from the stem pag- of pangere, to fix; " pole " is from the same original source)

ground is spotted, blotched or marbled with almost every shade of purple, orange and redpassing from the most delicate

lilac

LILAC

, buff and peach-blossom, through violet, chestnut and crimson, to a nearly absolute black. The fierceness with which ospreys defend their eggs and

young

, in addition to the dangerous situation not infrequently chosen for the eyry, make the task of robbing the nests difficult.
The term " osprey," applied to the nuptial plumes of the egrets in the feather trade, is derived from the French esprit; it has nothing to do with the osprey bird, and its use has been supposed to be due to a confusion with " spray." (A. N.)

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