The observant reader would have noticed that at least two of the four raptors discussed above are closely related: the African Fish Eagle and the Bald Eagle share the first part of their scientific name, denoting that they belong to the same genus, Haliaeetus. Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) in the Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park, Mexico And then in Baja California, Mexico, a few weeks later, I saw two ospreys ( Pandion haliaetus) perched on sand dunes by the beach-brown-bodied, white-headed, fish-eating birds of prey yet again! And if I tell you that bald eagles ( Haliaeetus leucocephalus) are also fish-eating raptors, I bet you can guess exactly what they look like, even if you haven’t seen one. This turned out to be a mistake, since there are no fish eagles in the interior of India. It turned out that I had seen a Brahminy Kites ( Haliastur indus), and my mistake was justifiable, for Brahminy Kites are also brown-bodied, white-headed birds of prey that are found mostly near large bodies of water and whose diet includes fish. When, upon returning home to India, I saw a similarly patterned and colored bird-of-prey by a large pond, I dismissed it as yet another fish eagle. The striking contrast between its black-and-brown body and bright white head makes this fish eagle easy to distinguish from other raptors. The African Fish Eagle ( Haliaeetus vocifer) is a fairly common sight around the waterholes of Kruger National Park in north-east South Africa. ![]() African Fish Eagle (Haliaeetus vocifer) in the Kruger National Park, South AfricaĬonsider the example of fish-eating birds of prey. The pattern that struck me most forcefully, however, was how the similarities kept cropping up, despite a conscious effort on my part to appreciate different ecosystems for their uniqueness. Traveling in the southern U.S., South Africa, India, and Mexico over the last year, I have seen more cool creatures and funky biological phenomena than I could have hoped for. A first step in the process of grappling with huge volumes of biodiversity is realizing how similar two organisms from different corners of the world can be. ![]() However, making sense of this diversity-why it exists, how it is organized, and how to remember the name of that bizarre orange spider you saw just three days ago-is a central challenge in biology. For a biologist in the making, the most exciting aspect of traveling is observing the huge diversity of organisms found on earth.
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