42 British Birds^ 



not seldom happens that two are seen toorether — 

 perhaps the young from the same nest driven forth by 

 their stern parents to seek their own living in the 

 wide world. 



The male Eagle of this species is known, like the 

 male of many other kinds of birds, to take his turn 

 with his mate in incubating their eggs. It would 

 seem difficult for the observer to be mistaken in this 

 fact ; for the male bird, as is the case in the other 

 families of the Falconidae generally, is very distinctly 

 smaller than the female — to the actual extent indeed 

 of not much less than one-third of the entire size. 



We come next to a raptorial bird, whose food is 

 procured mainly from the water, — namely, the 



OSPREY— fPc7;/^/^;z haliaetiis). 



The Osprey, or Fishing Hawk, or Mullet Hawk, or 

 Eagle Fisher,^ builds its nest sometimes on a tree, 

 sometimes on some part of an ancient and deserted 

 building — always on the highest part, a turret or 

 chimney, for instance — and sometimes on a rock or 

 precipitous scar. But a very favourite and almost 

 characteristic site — speaking of the bird only as a 

 British bird — is on some low insular rock in a wild 

 mountain loch in Scotland. I extract a very striking 

 description from " St. John's Tour in Sutherland " : 

 " The nest was placed in a most curious situation. 

 About a hundred and fifty yards from the shore, there 

 rose from the deep water a solitary rock, about ten 

 feet high, shaped like a broken sugar-loaf or trun- 



^ A translation of the Gaelic name of the bird. 



