Last person to post in this thread wins!

[bWY39]

Originally Posted by manolos mom

I WINNNN!!! So you can stop the counting now...

1 9 2

I am not counting I am only telling everyone how many posts I have put on the forum as this seems to be the most vital issue.
I am waiting to see what my prize will be when I hit 2,000

[sugarmamma]

This is an Osprey


darn! Pic won't work....

[Micah my love]

Eagle

[bWY39]

1 9 9 3 getting close to my 2,000 now,,,ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh...what will my prize be ????

[sugarmamma]

Osprey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Osprey (disambiguation).
Osprey

North American subspecies

The Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), sometimes known as the sea hawk or fish eagle, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey. It is a large raptor, reaching more than 60 cm (24 in) in length and 180 cm (71 in) across the wings. It is brown on the upperparts and predominantly greyish on the head and underparts, with a black eye patch and wings.
The Osprey tolerates a wide variety of habitats, nesting in any location near a body of water providing an adequate food supply. It is found on all continents except Antarctica although in South America it occurs only as a non-breeding migrant.
As its other common name suggests, the Osprey's diet consists almost exclusively of fish. It has evolved specialised physical characteristics and exhibits unique behaviour to assist in hunting and catching prey. As a result of these unique characteristics, it has been given its own taxonomic genus, Pandion and family, Pandionidae. Four subspecies are usually recognised. Despite its propensity to nest near water, the Osprey is not a sea-eagle.
Contents [hide]
1 Taxonomy
1.1 Classification
1.2 Fossil record
1.3 Etymology
2 Description
3 Distribution and habitat
4 Behaviour
4.1 Diet
4.2 Reproduction
5 Migration
6 Status
7 Cultural depictions
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
[edit]Taxonomy

The Osprey was one of the many species described by Carolus Linnaeus in his 18th-century work, Systema Naturae, and named as Falco haliaeetus.[2] The genus, Pandion, is the sole member of the family of Pandionidae, and contains the sole species Osprey (P. haliaetus). The genus Pandion was described by the French zoologist Marie Jules César Savigny in 1809, and is taken from a mythical Greek king, Pandion.[3][4][5]
The Osprey differs in several respects from other diurnal birds of prey. Its toes are of equal length, its tarsi are reticulate, and its talons are rounded, rather than grooved. The Osprey and Owls are the only raptors whose outer toe is reversible, allowing them to grasp their prey with two toes in front and two behind. This is particularly helpful when they grab slippery fish.[6] It has always presented something of a riddle to taxonomists, but here it is treated as the sole living member of the family Pandionidae, and the family listed in its traditional place as part of the order Falconiformes. Other schemes place it alongside the hawks and eagles in the family Accipitridae—which itself can be regarded as making up the bulk of the order Accipitriformes or else be lumped with the Falconidae into Falconiformes. The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy has placed it together with the other diurnal raptors in a greatly enlarged Ciconiiformes, but this results in an unnatural paraphyletic classification.[7]
[edit]Classification


The Australasian subspecies is the most distinctive
The Osprey is unusual in that it is a single living species that occurs nearly worldwide. Even the few subspecies are not unequivocally separable. There are four generally recognised subspecies, although differences are small, and ITIS only lists the first two.[3]
P. h. haliaetus (Linnaeus, 1758), Eurasia.[8]
P. h. carolinensis (Gmelin, 1788), North America. This form is larger, darker bodied and has a paler breast than nominate haliaetus.[8]
P. h. ridgwayi (Maynard, 1887), Caribbean islands. This form has a very pale head and breast compared with nominate haliaetus, with only a weak eye mask.[8] It is non-migratory. Its scientific name commemorates American ornithologist Robert Ridgway.[9]
P. h. cristatus (Vieillot, 1816), coastline and some large rivers of Australia and Tasmania. The smallest subspecies, also non-migratory.[8]
[edit]Fossil record
To date there have been two extinct species named from the fossil record.[10] Pandion homalopteron was named by Stuart L. Warter in 1976 from fossils of Middle Miocene, Barstovian age, found in marine deposits in the southern part of the U.S. state of California. The second named species Pandion lovensis, was described in 1985 by Jonathan J. Becker from fossils found in the U.S state of Florida and dating to the latest Clarendonian and possibly representing a separate lineage from that of P. homalopteron and P. haliaetus. A number of claw fossils have been recovered from Pliocene and Pleistocene sediments in Florida and South Carolina, USA. The oldest recognized Pandionidae family fossils have been recovered from the Oligocene age Jebel Qatrani Formation, of Faiyum, Egypt. However they are not complete enough to assign to a specific genus.[11] Another Pandionidae claw fossil was recovered from Early Oligocene deposits in the Mainz basin, Germany, and was described in 2006 by Gerald Mayr.[12]
[edit]Etymologyby one organization, Citizens United to Protect the Maurice River and Its Tributaries, Inc. has become the official design of the State of New Jersey, U.S.A. The platform plans and materials list, available online, have been utilized by people from a number of different geographical regions.[38]
Ospreys usually mate for life. Rarely, polyandry has been recorded.[39] The breeding season varies according to latitude; spring (September–October) in southern Australia, April to July in northern Australia and winter (June–August) in southern Queensland.[36] In spring the pair begins a five-month period of partnership to raise their young. The female lays two to four eggs within a month, and relies on the size of the nest to conserve heat. The eggs are whitish with bold splotches of reddish-brown and are about 6.2 x 4.5 centimetres (2.4 x 1.8 in) and weigh about 65 grammes (2.4 oz).[36] The eggs are incubated for about 5 weeks to hatching.


Race haliaetus diving, catching & getting air-borne with prey in Kawal Wildlife Sanctuary, India.
The newly hatched chicks weigh only 50–60 grammes (2 oz), but fledge in 8–10 weeks. A study on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, had an average time between hatching and fledging of 69 days. The same study found an average of 0.66 young fledged per year per occupied territory, and 0.92 young fledged per year per active nest. Some 22% of surviving young either remained on the island, or returned at maturity to join the breeding population.[39] When food is scarce, the first chicks to hatch are most likely to survive. The typical lifespan is 7–10 years, though rarely individuals can grow to as old as 20–25 years. The oldest European wild osprey on record lived to be over thirty years of age. In North America Bubo owls and Bald Eagles (and possibly other eagles of comparable size) are the only major predators of both nests and sub adults.[35] However, kleptoparasitism by Bald Eagles, where the larger raptor steals the Osprey's catch, is more common than predation. Endoparasitic trematodes (Scaphanocephalus expansus and Neodiplostomum spp.) have been recorded in wild Ospreys.[40]
[edit]Migration



Preparing to mate on the nest
European breeders winter in Africa.[41] American and Canadian breeders winter in South America, although some stay in the southernmost U.S. states such as Florida and California.[42] Some Ospreys from Florida migrate to South America.[43] Australasian Ospreys tend not to migrate.
Studies of Swedish Ospreys showed that females tend to migrate to Africa earlier than the males. More stopovers are made during their autumn migration. The variation of timing and duration in autumn was more variable than in spring. Although migrating predominantly in the day, they sometimes fly in the dark hours particularly in crossings over water and cover on average 260–280 km/day with a maximum of 431 km/day.[44] European birds may also winter in South Asia, an Osprey ringed in Norway has been recovered in western India.[45]
[edit]Status



With fish
The Osprey has a large range, covering 9,670,000 km2 (3.7 million square miles) in just Africa and the Americas, and has a large global population estimated at 460,000 individuals. Although global population trends have not been quantified, the species is not believed to approach the thresholds for the population decline criterion of the IUCN Red List (i.e., declining more than 30% in ten years or three generations), and for these reasons, the species is evaluated as Least Concern.[1] There is evidence for regional decline in South Australia where former territories at locations in the Spencer Gulf and along the lower Murray River have been vacant for decades.[27]
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the main threats to Osprey populations were egg collectors and hunting of the adults along with other birds of prey,[35][46] but Osprey populations declined drastically in many areas in the 1950s and 1960s; this appeared to be in part due to the toxic effects of insecticides such as DDT on reproduction.[47] The pesticide interfered with the bird's calcium metabolism which resulted in thin-shelled, easily broken or infertile eggs.[24] Possibly because of the banning of DDT in many countries in the early 1970s, together with reduced persecution, the Osprey, as well as other affected bird of prey species, have made significant recoveries.[31] In South Australia, nesting sites on the Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island are vulnerable to unmanaged coastal recreation and encroaching urban development.[27]
The Osprey is the provincial bird of both Nova Scotia, Canada and Södermanland, Sweden.
[edit]

[Micah my love]

I win

[bWY39]

1 9 9 4 does this mean I WIN (spit) or is that reserved for cantankerous and poorly educated people ?

[bWY39]

1 9 9 5 and counting

[Micah my love]

Still winning YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAy

[sugarmamma]

cantankerous [kænˈtæŋkərəs]
adj
quarrelsome; irascible
[perhaps from C14 (obsolete) conteckour a contentious person, from conteck strife, from Anglo-French contek, of obscure origin]
cantankerously adv
cantankerousness n

[bWY39]

1 9 9 6 and getting so close to my major prize ohhhhhhhhhh excited now...

[bWY39]

1 9 9 7 and three to go, hey,......where did that "perch" go that had the crow sitting on it huh....lol

[bWY39]

1 9 9 8....Oh there is is in the distance I see it now

[bWY39]

1 9 9 9 and one more for my big big prize.....

[Micah my love]

2000000000000000000 i win