The osprey (Pandion haliaetus; ), historically known as sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor, reaching more than 60 cm (24 in) in length and a wingspan of 180 cm (71 in). It is brown on the upperparts and predominantly greyish on the head and underparts.
The osprey is distributed on all continents except Antarctica, but in South America, it occurs only as a nonbreeding migrant. It lives in a wide variety of habitats and nests in locations near a body of water providing an adequate food supply. It has specialised physical characteristics and unique behaviour in hunting its prey, which consists almost exclusively of fish.
Taxonomy
The osprey was described in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus under the name Falco haliaetus in his 10th edition of Systema Naturae. Linnaeus specified the type locality as Europe, but in 1761, he restricted the locality to Sweden.
The osprey is the only extant species placed in the genus Pandion that was introduced by French zoologist Marie Jules César Savigny in 1809. The genus is the sole member of the family Pandionidae. The species has always presented a riddle to taxonomists, but here it is treated as the sole living member of the family Pandionidae, and the family listed in its traditional place as part of the order Accipitriformes. Other schemes place it alongside the hawks and eagles in the family Accipitridae. The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy has placed it together with the other diurnal raptors in a greatly enlarged Ciconiiformes, but this results in an unnatural paraphyletic classification. Molecular phylogenetic analysis revealed that the family Pandionidae is a sister taxon of the family Accipitridae. The two families diverged an estimated 50.8 million years ago.
The osprey is unusual in that it is a sole living species that occurs nearly worldwide. Even the few subspecies are not unequivocally separable. Generally, four subspecies are...
