Nothing like a little fast food trout.
Ospreys, also known as sea hawks, are some of the best fish hunters in the entire animal kingdom. Of all the predatory birds, the osprey is arguably the best angler of them all. They have a success rate diving for fish at around 70%.
They are so good, in fact, that bald eagles have often been known to swoop in after sea hawks catch a fish and steal the fish away from ospreys rather than hunt their own. Translation: bald eagles know the sea hawk is going to catch a fish, so why not just steal it from them rather than mess around with fishing themselves?
How are ospreys such great anglers? Well, one of the reasons why has to be their eye sight. The large birds have incredible long distance vision, often referred to as “binocular vision,” and are equipped with high density receptors that allow them to see ultra violet rays.
Ospreys also have reversible toes, which allows for the them to move their four talons to a “two and two” position. This characteristic gives them an advantage when picking up fish, and also gives them the ability to rotate the fish parallel with their flying direction, thus making their fishing expeditions more aerodynamic.
All of those osprey strengths are showcased in this video below, which shows the sea hawk timing up a “scoop” with a trout jumping in and out of the water. The catching of the fish was relatively easy for the osprey, but when it came time to splash out of the water and return to the sky with its trout in tow, it struggled a bit.
The slow motion video sticks with the sea hawk as it reemerges above the water’s surface and tries to get enough momentum going to carry its freshly caught fish up into the air and off to a place to chow down. The video’s description suggested that the trout the sea hawk caught was likely just as heavy as the bird itself:
“A diving osprey plunges into a Highland loch (Scotland) to catch a fish supper. But the struggle isn’t over. A big trout can match an osprey weight for weight and the bird must get airborne again.”
Eventually, the osprey was able to get out of the water, but not after a brief battle with gravity. It was likely a character building catch, and possibly taught the sea hawk that it can go for slightly smaller trout from there on out (poet and I didn’t know it).
Check it out:
