thin king

Ospreys like to build their nest on manmade structures, such as utility poles and channel markers. And nest platforms have been designed specially for them, to reestablish them in areas where they had disappeared. Ospreys exist all over the globe living near large bodies of water, along coastlines, lakes, and rivers, where their food source can be found. The female osprey normally lays three eggs, creamy white with blotches of brown in colour. Their incubation is mostly by the female osprey over a period of about five weeks. Osprey eggs do not all hatch at the same time, the earlier egg hatches sooner. The older chick dominates its younger siblings. When food is abundant, all is well; in times of scarcity, the younger ones may starve to death. The female osprey remains with the young chicks most of  the time, sheltering and feeding them, while the male osprey brings the fish. The young fledglings are able to take off in about seven weeks.  Normally the reproduction is one brood per year. 

Ospreys are able to detect their prey underwater from the air. Ospreys have special outer toes that are reversible such that they allow its talons to grasp with two toes in front and two toes from behind. The soles of their talons have barbed pads and these help them to grip slippery fish.  Ospreys are able to snatch live fish in the water, their average catch are fish about a few hundred gm. in weight, and 30 cm. in length; and larger fish, up to kilograms are taken as they come. The way an osprey hunts a fish is spectacularly awesome. When an osprey spots a fish it makes its approach accordingly. When the fish is near the water surface it speeds up horizontally over the water with both its talons fully outstretched ahead of it, snatches it and continues its flight with its fish dangling from its talons, to a resting place to feed on it. But when the fish is way below the water surface it flies high up in the air and then makes a bullet-like downward plunge right into the water to snatch its prey, disappearing from view. Thereafter it rises above the water surface with the fish clutched by its talons, and gathering its composure takes it aflight like an aircraft taking off. 

But sometimes the osprey takes a fish much bigger or heavier than its ability to handle, and this can become a tangle and struggle for life and death. The osprey's toes are sharp and long and curved, and once these are clamped onto the fish, they become tightly hooked, and thus if it is unable to lift its fish and fly away, it may drown instead. When the fish is heavy the struggle is awkward and intense. The osprey rises to the surface with its fish in its clutches, it rests and takes stock of its situation. When it is ready it tries to fly with the clutched fish in its talons. And here the flapping of its wings as it struggles to get airborne is a magnificent sight. The pair of wings, turning and flapping, and flapping and twisting, in unison symmetrically, is like a beautiful ballet. This struggle may last a while, but often than not, the fight ends as the osprey gets its prey airborne. Then as it flies away, it shrugs its head vigorously while in flight to dislodge the water in its feathers, taking the fish sailing gracefully in the air, to its roost.