Osprey on Sanibel Island 3-1-12

This osprey (Pandion heliaetus) is sitting just outside our deck at the Sanibel Moorings making quite a racket. Osprey are also called sea hawks, fish eagles and fish hawks. Pandion was a mythical Greek King of Athens who was transformed into an eagle. We see them at this time of the year with huge fish in their beaks

flying back to the nest.

 

This osprey is on a nest in the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. (An elderly ladyat the Ding told me that they didn't have any picnic tables there because they were arefuge not a park.)

There was a medieval belief that fish surrendered to the osprey by turning belly up.

For instance, Shakespeare wrote:

             I think he'll be to Rome

             As is the osprey to the

               fish, who takes it

             By sovereignty of nature.

                    Coriolanus IV.V.