A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
osprey
The osprey is a large fish-eating raptor found on every continent except Antarctica, which is an unusually wide range for a bird of prey. It hunts by hovering, then folding and hitting the water feet first, sometimes going completely under. Its outer toe reverses so it can grip with two toes forward and two back, and the soles are covered in spines, so a fish once held does not come loose.
Etymology
The word came into English through French from a Latin term meaning bone-breaker, and it was originally applied to a different bird entirely: the lammergeier, which drops bones onto rock to split them. Medieval writers transferred the name to the fish hawk, and English inherited the mistake.
Notes
An osprey carries a fish head-forward, turning it in the air after the catch so that it flies streamlined rather than dragging a crosswise load. Nests are enormous and are added to every year, so an established one can be several feet across and used for decades. The bird recolonized much of its former range in Britain and North America over the past sixty years and now nests on artificial platforms and power poles by preference.