Bold Everglades Ospreys: Wings, Waters & Whistles

The Osprey is a robust raptor that can reach up to two feet in length with a six foot wingspan.

Inhabiting Everglades National Park is the North American Osprey, which is one of the four raptor subspecies of this bird.

North American Ospreys range from Alaska, across Canada, southwest Mexico, the Caribbean, and down into South America. If you’re intrigued by this, you can find maps of their whole range here. They are quite diverse. The Osprey’s extensive breeding range extends to all the continents except South America and the Antarctic.

Among the worlds’ best studied birds of prey, the Osprey is the one raptor that plunges and dives to eat live fish as its main source of food.

“The osprey wars are on… I have seen ospreys stoop on fish with such ferocity that the water boiled.”—John Steinbeck.  This quote explains the Ospreys’ behavior of ducking themselves in water to feed and they do it with such efficiency that it must be terrific. Ospreys are also known as “Fish Hawks” the reason being that they are likely to hover above their fish prey in the water, and then they swoop down to capture the fish with their talons.

The North American Osprey’s population decreased substantially after 1947, because of the eggs thinning effect of DDT. Thankfully they began to recover after the pesticide (DDT) was banned in 1972.

Ospreys have a high pitched whistle voice. Similarly, another call is a succession of chirps during flight, an alarm, or most often given when an unfamiliar Osprey approaches the nest.

Ospreys, a magnificent raptor, are diverse in range and dip into water to capture their food.