So much for “Finder’s Keepers.”
When you take a moment to observe nature, you realize that it’s really a funny place. Animals are just living their best lives and trying to get by, and sometimes that means a pelican feels the need to launch an aerial attack on an osprey in order to steal away a meal.
Ospreys, also known as sea hawks, are some of the most gifted fisherbirds (just made that up) 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%.
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 and successful.
So successful, in fact, that other birds have often been known to swoop in after sea hawks get a fish in tow to steal the fish away from ospreys, rather than hunt their own. Translation: if 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?
Which brings us to this remarkable video (shout out to Mark Smith Photography) of a lazy pelican playing the long game, waiting for an osprey to catch a fish so that it could snatch it away. Pelicans are known to be good at fishing as well, though they usually resort to a method called “plunge diving.” The success rate can be iffy… but the success rate of just stealing a fish from another bird?
Seems pretty high based on this video.
Once the osprey had scooped up the fish and began flying away, the pelican went to work. It flew up from its perch, opened its ridiculously large mouth, and chomped down on the fish – and the osprey’s feet. The rightful owner to the fish never saw the sneak attack coming, and ultimately had to abandon its catch and fly away.
Mark Smith, the photographer behind the video, did a great job explaining how the encounter went down:
“The pelicans have been extra bold lately, trying their hardest to snatch a free meal from the ospreys. They are rarely successful, but this time the pelican managed a very clever sneak attack from behind.
The osprey, thinking it was free and clear, tried to shake off the water weight from the dive, and that little pause was all it took for the hungry pelican to close the gap and its gaping maw around the osprey’s catch. It’s crazy out there sometimes.”
