Osprey

Pandion haliaetus

The fish hawk delivers with talons of precision. Never drops a message — or a fish.

Population: 100,000-1,200,000 mature individuals (BirdLife International/IUCN 2021 assessment), population trend increasing; a commonly-cited secondary figure of ~460,000 total individuals also circulates but is not the IUCN mature-individuals figure
Habitat: Freshwater lakes and rivers, coastal brackish waters, and marine shorelines near abundant fish; Cornell specifically notes shallow, fish-filled water including rivers, lakes, reservoirs, lagoons, swamps, and marshes, with nest sites typically within ~12 miles of a reliable food source
Fun fact: The osprey has reversible outer toes and spiny footpads (spicules), plus backward-facing barb-like scales on the talons, that let it grip slippery fish with two toes forward and two back - a foot adaptation shared among raptors only with owls.
Range: Cosmopolitan raptor found on every continent except Antarctica, breeding across the Palearctic and North America and wintering into South America, Africa, and Australasia (a nonbreeding migrant only in South America)
Diet: Almost exclusively live fish (about 99% of diet), typically fish weighing roughly 150-300g (one-third to two-thirds of a pound), caught by diving feet-first into water; can occasionally take prey up to ~2kg
Size: 0.6 m
Wingspan: 1.6 m
Lifespan: 20 years

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