56 HILL BIRDS OF SCOTLAND 



their West Highland loch on their migration southward, 

 and they probably fell victims to a gunner in the course 

 of their winter wanderings, or on their arrival in Southern 

 England with the coming of another spring. 



The Osprey has sometimes been given the name of 

 Mullet Hawk, and in the case of the pair above mentioned 

 such a designation would appear singularly appropriate, for 

 though in Loch Arkaig — a fresh-water loch — there are 

 many fish, yet the Ospreys did almost all their hunting on 

 Loch Eil and Loch Linnhe, land-locked fjords of the broad 

 Atlantic, and the fish with which they winged their way 

 back to the home loch was, nine times out of ten, a mullet. 

 When on a fishing expedition the Osprey flies some dis- 

 tance — from a hundred to two hundred feet — ^above the 

 water, and on sighting its intended prey immediately 

 checks its flight, hovering like a great Kestrel as it decides 

 whether or not the prospective victim is sufficiently near 

 the surface to justify a plunge. The Osprey does not 

 dive ; it makes the attack with feet stretched out to their 

 full, and so rapid is the stoop that the fish seldom has 

 sufficient time to move down to deeper water before 

 the bird of prey is upon it and, grasping it firmly with 

 one talon, gives itself one or two shakes to drive the water 

 from its feathers, and then soars away to its eyrie. 



In olden days, before naturalists were familiar with 

 its habits, the Osprey was said to swim with one foot and 

 to catch fish with the other — a quaint statement and 

 very far from the truth. To enable it to cope success- 

 fully with such elusive animals as fish in their native 

 element the claws of the Fish Eagle are somewhat modi- 

 fied ; while in other hawks the claws are flat beneath and 

 edged, they are rounded in the Osprey, so as not to tear 

 the fish and to enable them to be more easily withdrawn. 

 This precaution is necessary, for at times the Osprey \n\\ 

 grapple with a fish so powerful and heavy that the captor 



