366 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Adults have a similar, prolonged molt, which may be in evidence dur- 

 ing any month in the year. 



The American osprey is supposed to have much less spotting on 

 the breast than the European bird, but this character is none too well 

 marked and none too constant in the series I have examined. The 

 spotted breast, in the American bird, is said by some writers to be a 

 character of the female, but in a series of 33 males and 22 females 

 I find but little evidence of it. Among birds with white or nearlj^ 

 white breasts I find 13 males and 4 females; with lightly spotted 

 breasts, there are 14 males and 9 females ; and with heavily spotted 

 breasts, I find 6 males and 9 females. A heavily spotted bird shows 

 on each feather a large, concealed spot of "olive-brown" and a smaller, 

 subterminal, triangular spot of "clay color" and "snuff brown", with 

 a dusky shaft streak; there are all gradations from the above to a 

 bird with only the shaft streaks. In the European bird, the throat 

 and upper breast are pale brown, sometimes tinged with rusty, form- 

 ing a broad pectoral band. Very few American birds even approach 

 this condition ; these may be the younger birds, for I believe that the 

 breast becomes whiter with advancing age. 



Food. — Fish is the almost exclusive food of the osprey, well named 

 the fish hawk. The following species have been recorded in its food : 

 Alewife or herring, bluefish, blowfish, bonito, bowfin, carp, catfish, 

 eel, flounder, flying fish, goldfish, hornpout, menhaden, mullet, perch, 

 pickerel, pike, salmon, shad, squiteague, sucker, sunfish, tom.cod, 

 trout, and whitefish; doubtless many others might be included. As 

 the osprey is not a deep diver, it catches only such fish as swim on 

 or near the surface, or in rather shallow water. Walter B. Savary 

 writes to me of the following amusing incident : "This summer, while 

 watching a fish hawk at his fishing, I saw him catch and lose four 

 blowfish {Spheroides maculatiis Nichols), the fish escaping each time 

 by inflating itself until the hawk's talons lost their hold. The bird 

 was near at hand and I, through my field glasses, could see the fish 

 as he blew himself up, and, when he fell, lie on the surface until he 

 could deflate. The bird never got above ten feet from the water 

 before the fish got loose." 



Audubon (1840) says that the fish hawk catches flying fish while 

 they are swimming near the surface but does not attempt to catch 

 them in the air. I was much surprised one day to see an osprey 

 flying over at short range with a small flounder in its talons; the 

 hawk's claws were embedded in the back of the fish, whose white 

 belly and twitching tail were clearly seen. I marveled at the bird's 

 ability to dive deeply enough to capture a fish on the bottom, until I 

 remembered that these small flounders often swim into shallow 

 water; but I still marvel at the keen vision needed to locate a fish 



