358 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



disturb. Mr. Jerome could pass close to the pile of rails without the birds 

 leaving the nest, while I could not get nearer than thirty or forty feet. * * • 

 Out on the sandy meadow to tlie southward were what at a distance appeared 

 to be two gigantic muslirooms about seventy-five yards apart. A nearer ap- 

 proach disclosed the fact that they were cedar trees twenty feet high; the 

 trunks were about one foot in diameter and without a limb for the first ten 

 feet. The whole top of each tree was involved in a huge nest. These nests, 

 Mr. Jerome said, had been occupied every year for forty years, each year the 

 Hawks repairing them and adding to their bulk. These nests were so unusually 

 large that they are worthy of description. Each nest involved the whole 

 tree, even to the lowest branches. At the base loose sticks, six to twelve feet 

 in length, were spread out so as to form a projecting platform ten to fifteen feet 

 in diameter, forming complete protection from below. The base of the solid 

 portion of the nest was about eight feet across, sloping up to the level top, 

 which was about four feet across, and very firm and solid, and readily bearing 

 my weight. The bulk of this nest was about equal to three cartloads. The 

 central part of the nest consisted of a mass of sand and decayed matter from 

 the old nests, much of which had fallen through to the ground. The base of 

 the nest consisted of long sticks, oyster stakes, etc., loosely put together and 

 extending beyond the longest limbs of the tree, making it over twelve feet in 

 diameter. Each year for many years the nest had been repaired and built 

 up with every kind of material that had been washed ashore or could be picked 

 up in the fields. The center of the nest, nearly five feet high, was composed 

 of clods and sand and the decayed remains of material added many years 

 before. 



Of the famous colony on Gardiners Island, Mr. Abbott (1911) 

 writes : 



Ospreys' nests on Gardiner's Island are placed in almost every conceivable 

 situation. They are on trees by scores, both high up and low down ; on rocks 

 and boulders, whether on land or in the water ; on sheds and buildings ; on 

 fences and walls ; on piles of debris ; on old stumps ; on a floating wooden plat- 

 form intended for the fishermen's use : on a channel buoy ; on sand-bluffs ; on 

 pieces of wreckage, driftwood, and flsh-boxes. The birds even attempted to 

 build on the slender stakes supporting the fish-nets! In all of these varied 

 nesting-sites, however, it will be noted that at least the suggestion of an 

 eminence has probably first attracted the Osprey to the spot. Similarly, many 

 of the ground nests are found to be very close to some prominent object — 

 itself incapable of supporting the nest — such as a post, a notice-sign, a telegraph 

 pole, or a pointed stone. The high, shelving beach, with its tempting piles of 

 seaweed, probably appealed to some of the first ground-nesters as an "emi- 

 nence," and their offspring have come back and chosen a similar nesting-site. 

 \t all events, in 1910 there was a succession of no less than twenty-two nests 

 at intervals varying from eleven yards to three hundred yards along the beach, 

 on the south-westerly side of Gardiner's Island. Some of the most recent addi- 

 tions to the beach-nesting colony had certainly quite lost any instinctive attrac- 

 tion for an "eminence" ; their nests being a mere scattering of sticks in the 

 edge of the marsh-grass — in location suggesting more the humble home of the 

 Tern than the eyrie of the noble Osprey. 



In the southern Atlantic and Gulf States the ospreys nest very 

 commonly in living or dead cypresses, about the shores of lakes, 

 along the banks of streams, or on the borders of swamps. Some of 



