Cultural Depictions
Nisos, a king of Megara in Greek mythology, became a sea eagle or Osprey, to attack his daughter after she fell in love with Minos, king of Crete.
The Roman writer Pliny the Elder reported that parent Ospreys made their young fly up to the sun as a test, and dispatch any that failed.
Another odd legend regarding this fish-eating bird of prey, derived from the writings of Albertus Magnus and recorded in Holinshed's Chronicles, was that it had one webbed foot and one taloned foot.
There was a medieval belief that fish were so mesmerised by the Osprey that they turned belly-up in surrender, and this is referenced by Shakespeare in Act 4 Scene 5 of Coriolanus:
I think he'll be to Rome
As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature.
The Irish poet William Butler Yeats used a grey wandering Osprey as a representation of sorrow in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889).
The Osprey is depicted as a white eagle in heraldry, and more recently has become a symbol of positive responses to nature, and has been featured on more than 50 postage stamps used as a brand name for various products and sports teams. (Examples include the Ospreys, a Rugby Union team; the Missoula Osprey, a minor league baseball team; the Seattle Seahawks, an American football team; and the North Florida Ospreys) or as a mascot (examples include the Springs School Ospreys in Springs, New York; Geraldton skiing team in Australia; the University of North Florida; Salve Regina University; Wagner College; the University of North Carolina at Wilmington; Richard Stockton College; and Wells International School in Bangkok, Thailand.) Osprey was the device of the arms of former parish of Sääksmäki, Finland, and also the emblem of the 4th Flight of the Finnish Air Force elite unit, LeLv 24.
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