Ospreys

Picture a bird with a body the size of a seagull and a huge 5-foot wingspan, soaring high above a shallow bay. It wheels in tighter and tighter circles until suddenly it stalls in midair, flapping its wings wildly. The osprey, with eyesight up to eight times sharper than ours, has spotted a herring underwater 100 feet below.

Holding itself as still as it can, the bird hovers for long seconds. Then abruptly it tucks its wings and dives as fast as 80 miles per hour. Although the water distorts the fish's image and location, the ospreycompensatesfor the distortion by changing the angle of its dive.

As it zeroes in on its prey, the osprey extends its feet forward and plunges its entire body head-and-feet-first into the water. Ospreys have been known to hit the water with such force that they break a wing. Talons clamp onto the fish and barbed pads on the soles of the bird's feet secure its grip. In an instant, the osprey surfaces, shaking off water and rising triumphantly into the air with its prize. For its part, the herring has begun what is probably the wildest and least expected ride of its life.

The osprey, also known as the fish hawk or sea eagle, resembles a seagull in flight. It is like the bald eagle in its coloring, hunting technique, and taste for fish, but the osprey is the onlyraptorthat captures fish underwater. Eagles also grab fish from the water with their talons, but they are too large and heavy to submerge completely.

Ospreys use a variety of tall structures for their nests, including trees, cacti, rock towers, and nesting platforms constructed by humans. Acceptable nesting materials range from sticks, seaweed, and grass to plastic dolls, aluminum cans, TV antennas, and bicycle tires. An osprey nest often looks like a huge pile of junk, but it has to be solid. Later in the season, the nest must be able to support the weight of two or more grown birds.

Marshes, coastal bays, and inlets along the East Coast and the northwestern United States are the ospreys' most common hunting grounds. They can also be seen soaring over prairies and grasslands. Although they are usually solitary hunters, every October ospreys fly to South America in large flocks. Birds as young as three months old, which are barely out of the nest and hunting for themselves, fly south with the rest of the flock and return two years later to the place where they grew up.

Unfortunately, ospreys and other raptors have had a difficult time surviving in the last century. From the 1940s to the 1960s, pesticides such as DDT caused population declines in many raptors. These chemicals made the birds' eggshells so thin that they broke under the weight of the female bird. Some kinds of chemicals collect in the bodies of fish and small birds. When carnivorous species such as the osprey eat the smaller animals, they end up with a high concentration of the chemicals in their bodies. The banning of DDT in the early 1970s brought many species back from the edge of extinction, but these and similar pesticides are still used in other countries.

Today, shrinking habitat is probably the single greatest threat to the osprey. For this highly specialized hunter, life is difficult enough without the loss of places to live and hunt and the presence of dangerous chemicals in its food. If osprey and other raptors are to survive for the long term, we must learn how to share our habitat with them more successfully than we do now.

The author of this selection most likely wants readers to feel

	A	disgust at the daily killing that goes on in the name of survival.
	B	amusement at the osprey's clumsiness.
	C	awe at the osprey's hunting skill and sympathy for its plight.
	D	irritation at the stupidity of a bird that breaks its own eggs by sitting on them.