1.  Ospreys are birds of prey, whose diet is almost exclusively fish.

            There is no better fisherman on planet earth than the osprey.

2. The osprey is a raptor. Those of us from generation JurassicPark can’t help but think of the terrifying dinosaurs called Velociraptor.

3. Osprey mate for life.

4. The female is slightly larger that the male.  She wears a necklace.

5. North American ospreys migrate to South America every fall to “winter” for the season.  The mates take “separate vacations”.  They use the magnetic fields of the earth to navigate.

6. Ospreys have incredible eyesight. They can see eight times better than humans.  Ospreys are hunters, they must be able to see their prey, sometimes from great distances, and calculate just the right moment to strike. In fact, an osprey can spot a medium-sized flounder from at least one mile away.

7. A skein is the symmetric V-shaped flight formation of migratory birds. The V formation greatly boosts the efficiency and range of flying birds, particularly over long migratory routes.

8. Osprey pairs usually return to the same nest site year after year, and add new nest materials to the old nest each year.

9. 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.

10. Human habitat is sometimes an aid to the osprey. The birds happily build large stick-and-sod nests on telephone poles, channel markers, and other such locations. Artificial nesting platforms are common in areas where preservationists are working to reestablish the birds.

11. North American osprey populations became endangered in the 1950s due to chemical pollutants such as DDT, which thinned their eggshells and hampered reproduction. Ospreys have rebounded significantly in recent decades, though they remain scarce in some locales.