Osprey (Wings of the World by Safari Ltd.)

I do not engage in the ‘wishes and wants’ and ‘predictions’ threads on the forums. For one reason, I like to be surprised, and I find it more rewarding when something is announced that wasn’t expected. Secondly, is that many people’s wishes and wants tend to be really obscure things that have a low probability of getting produced, thus resulting in disappointment when official announcements are made. That being said, the osprey has been a wished species since I started to expand my collection beyond arthropods in late 2018. Now, it’s not that there haven’t been any osprey figures produced, it’s just that there hasn’t been anything of high quality and readily available, at least not in recent years. I had a feeling that a new osprey would hit the market eventually, and I always hoped it would be by Safari Ltd. for their Wings of the World line. Well guess what? This year, they came through for us!

The osprey (Pandion haliaetus) is one of the most naturally widely ranging bird species, having a near cosmopolitan distribution. Occurring around both marine and freshwater habitats, in can be found throughout North America south to the northern half of South America, Europe, southern Asia, Africa (outside of the Sahara Desert and Congo Basin), coastal Australia, and the South Pacific. The only other bird of prey with a wider distribution is the peregrine falcon. The osprey is almost exclusively piscivorous, with fish making up about 99% of its diet; other prey include small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, mollusks, and other birds, as well as carrion. Many raptors are notorious pirates, and osprey must sometimes defend their catch from bald eagles. I first saw an osprey in the wild in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, when I was a college student more interested in snorkeling and drinking than birding, but since I ‘officially’ became a birder in 2021, I have documented the osprey 27 times (that’s checklists, not individuals) in nine states (Florida, Arizona, Washington, Utah, Ohio, California, Maryland, Wisconsin, and Virginia).

The Safari osprey stands about 6.0 cm tall (including the base) and is about 6.5 cm across its widest points. Calculating the scale for bird figures can be inherently challenging, since formal metrics are usually taken from dead specimens stretched out and measured from the tip of the beak to the tip of the tail feathers. Measuring as best I could along the midline of the body, I came up with a body length of approximately 8.5 cm for a scale of 1:5.9-1:7.8.

The bird is sculpted on a base that appears to be either a post along a pier or maybe the top of a telephone pole. There’s a decent number of collectors that don’t like bases on their figures, but they don’t bother me. The bird is looking over its left shoulder. Individual feathers are sculpted all over the body and some of the larger feathers have a distinct rachis and vanes. The talons are appropriately sharp, but it’s an easier feat with the base.

The paint job is very nice. Most of the head and venter is white or slight off-white with dark brown streaking on the head and the characteristic mask starting from behind the eyes. There is a brown wash around the neck, base of the legs, and undertail. The back, wings, and tail feathers are brown, but not just a solid brown. The base is a standard brown, but here are darker and lighter accents on individual feathers, and a lighter tan along the tips of the wing coverts. The talons are black, the beak is a semi-gloss grey, and the eyes are yellow with a dark brown pupil. Overall, very well done and an improvement over other birds with much simpler paint jobs, such as their long-eared owl. There is a little paint carryover around the talons, but again a marked improvement over other birds, such as their common raven.

What more can I say? This is a wonderful example of an osprey and recommended to collectors of animals or wildlife in general, birds specifically, or interesting taxa. Basically, unless taxonomic, temporal, size, or other restrictions wouldn’t allow for such a figure into one’s collection, it belongs on your shelves LOL. Ok, perhaps I am just a bit overly excited to finally get a good representative of this species as a figure, but it comes highly recommended.