Each week, the self-righteous and highly judgmental journalist Rab McNeil puts one of the country's weel-kent creations, names or faces under close scrutiny in his Scottish Icons series. This week, the humble osprey falls under his Sauron-like gaze...
I'll let you into a wee secret here: I despise all birds of prey. Well, nearly all. I might let this week’s Icon off as it is pescatarian. It doesn’t carry off lambs or kill wee garden birds.
I am the Guardian of Wee Garden Birds and, forby taking never ending measures to keep out the evil in paradise that is the domestic cat, my eyes scour the skies to shout abuse at any passing birds of prey, accompanied by threats involving my boot and their buttocks if they come anywhere near my sweet little charges.
Before proceeding further, I should say that the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) isn’t just Scottish but has a nearly global distribution, being found on every continent except Antartica (bit chilly). But in the UK it is most strongly associated with Auld Scotia, where it is now a major icon, a “flagship species”, of nature conservation.
Hunted to extinction in the early 20th century by the usual suspects in tweed, they were resurrected as a species here in 1954, and now around 300 pairs breed in Scotland.
Soon, one hopes, we’ll be able to make them in laboratories so that they won’t even have to indulge in the sleazy business of breeding.
First, though, a word about etymology, the subject famous for jumping to ridiculous conclusions. It’s often stated that “osprey” comes from the Latin ossifragium – bit of a stretch – meaning “bone-breaker”, something of an overstatement, even if it has powerful legs and feet for the persecution of fish.
Others derive the word, first recorded around 1460, from Anglo-French ospriet and Medieval Latin avis prede “bird of prey”, which sounds a bit pat. The “bone breaker” baloney is blamed on Pliny the Elder, but it’s thought he was havering aboot the bearded vulture.
The genus name Pandion derives from a mythical king of Athens, while the species name haliaetus is Greek meaning “bad breath”. Only kidding, it’s reportedly “sea-eagle”.
Still on the controversial subject of wurdz for burdz, swanky folks say “piscivorous”. But I think they’re just taking the piscatorial.
Wing and a layer
SO, what aboot the actual bird itself? Well, after going extinct in Scotland in 1916, a pair of ospreys returned out of the blue to breed at Loch Garten in 1954. When the RSPB led “Operation Osprey” to protect the nest near Loch Garten from egg collecting weirdos, the species was set fair to become citizens of Scotia once more and now pays its council tax mainly in the Cairngorms and Perthshire.
That said, it’s just a summer resident, migrating here from West Africa every April to raise bairns before wimping out in September and returning to more clement climes. Like other migrating birds, it’s at risk while flying over Third World countries around the Mediterranean and Balkans where leading intellectuals are apt to take a pot shot at them.
Evidence of ospreys in the UK dates back 12,000 years, while the oldest Pandionidae fossils, from the Oligocene epoch (between 23 and 34 million years ago), were found in Faiyum Governorate, Egypt.
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Ospreys have deep, glossy brown upperparts, while the breast is white, as are the underparts. The head is white and, like all birds of prey (and cats), they have cruel, evil faces, even if slightly less satanic than most, probably reflecting their more benign diet. The sexes look similar, though females are larger than males, as with humans in Glasgow.
Unlike humans, ospreys are monogamous and return to the same nest year after year. Their nests are disgraceful, a mess of sticks on cliffs or high in trees near water. Two to three surprisingly small eggs are laid. The female incubates them, while the male has a proper job, scoring food and defending territory.
Weighing only a couple of ounces, but growing quickly due to their high-protein diet, chicks hatch after around 37 days. At five weeks, they’re nearly fully grown and, eight or so weeks later, can hunt alone and are ready to migrate.
Parents wing it
PLINY the Elder claimed parent ospreys made their young fly up to the sun as a test and dispatched any that failed. Guy was an idiot.
Weighing around the same as a small chicken, ospreys reach around two feet in length with a wingspan of 60-71 inches. They can lift a fish weighing as much as 4.4lb out of the water.
Fab fact: osprey and owls are the only raptors whose outer toes are reversible, allowing them to grasp their prey with two toes in front and two behind. As you’ll know from experience, this helps when grabbing slippery fish.
Ospreys are quite good at the hovering. They cruise over lochs and rivers at up to 30 miles an hour. On spotting a fish – not fussy what kind though usually trout here – they go into a steep dive, adjusting their approach to account for distortion of the fish’s image caused by refraction.
Just before diving, the osprey closes its nostrils and, at the last second, stretches out its talons to grab the target from under the surface, sometimes completely submerging its body before returning to the nest with the takeaway or scoffing it itself on the branch of a nearby tree.
One of the many wicked aspects of birds of prey is the desolate cry of despair and death that they send across the skies. The osprey’s call has been described is a series of sharp whistles. There now follows, ahem, a demonstration: cheep-cheep, yewk-yewk. Disturbed at the nest, they are likely to go cheereek in frenzied tones. Cheereek, aye.
Ospreys live nine years on average but can live much longer.
Fame on the fly
IN Scotland, two famous ospreys were EJ and Lady, whose hilarious adventures featured on the internet and social media for years. Alas, Loch Garten’s famous female EJ was last seen in 2019, thought to have been too old at 21 to make the migration back from West Africa. A female called Asha has recently been seen occupying the nest.
Lady nested at the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Loch of the Lowes reserve for 24 years and was thought to have died at 29, after bunging forth many chicks. Latterly, a female known as NC0 (after the letters and number on her leg-ring) has been strutting her funky stuff.
Good luck to her. Ospreys are not the worst birds of prey, and even I won’t deny that the sight of a raptor gliding through the sky can be spectacular. Then again, as a former air cadet, I feel the same about death-dealing fighter jets.
