54 FISH-HAWK, OR OSPREY. 



that he appears fixed in air, flapping his wings. The object however 

 he abandons, or rather the fish he had in his eye has disappeared, and 

 he is again seen saihng around as before. Now his attention is again 

 arrested, and he descends with great rapidity ; but ere he reaches the 

 surface, shoots off on another course, as if ashamed that a second victim 

 had escaped him. He now sails at a short height above the surface, 

 and by a zig-zag descent and without seeming to dip his feet in the 

 water, seizes a fish, which after carrying a short distance, he probably 

 drops, or yields up to the Bald Eagle, and again ascends by easy spiral 

 circles, to the higher regions of the air, where he glides about in all the 

 ease and majesty of his species. At once from this sublime aerial 

 height he descends like a perpendicular torrent, plunging into the sea 

 with a loud rushing sound, and with the certainty of a rifle. In a few 

 moments he emerges, bearing in his claws his struggling prey, which he 

 always carries head foremost ; and having risen a few feet above the 

 surface, shakes himself as a water spaniel would do, and directs his 

 heavy and laborious course directly for the land. If the wind blow 

 hard, and his nest lie in the quarter from whence it comes, it is 

 amusing to observe with what judgment and exertion he beats to wind- 

 ward, not in a direct line, that is, in the winds eye, but making several 

 successive tacks to gain his purpose. This will appear the more strik- 

 ing, when we consider the size of the fish which he sometimes bears 

 along. A shad was taken from a Fish-Hawk, near Great Egg Harbor, 

 on which he had begun to regale himself, and had already ate a con- 

 siderable portion of it, the remainder weighed six pounds. Another 

 Fish-Hawk was passing Mr. Beasley's, at the same place, with a large 

 flounder in his grasp, which struggled and shook him so, that he droped 

 it on the shore. The flounder was picked up, and served the whole 

 family for dinner. It is singular that the Hawk never descends to pick 

 up a fish which he happens to drop, either on the land or on the water. 

 There is a kind of abstemious dignity in this habit of the Hawk, supe- 

 rior to the gluttonous voracity displayed by most other birds of prey, 

 particularly by the Bald Eagle, whose piratical robberies committed on 

 the present species have been already fully detailed in treating of his 

 history. The Hawk, however, in his fishing pursuits, sometimes mistakes 

 his mark, or overrates his strength, by striking fish too large and powerful 

 for him to manage, by whom he is suddenly dragged under ; and though 

 he sometimes succeeds in extricating himself, after being taken three or 

 four times down, yet oftener both parties perish. The bodies of stur- 

 geon, and several other large fish, with that of the Fish-Hawk fast 

 grappled in them, have at difl"erent times been found dead on the shore, 

 cast up by the waves. 



The Fish-Hawk is doubtless the most numerous of all its genus within 

 the United States. It penetrates far into the interior of the country 



