NEST OF THE AMERICAN OSPREY AT SAN CLEMENTE ISLAND. 

 OSPREY SERIES NO. Q. — PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSEPH GRINNEUI-. 



garding them, there is no space for discourse. For In the Zoological Park are man}- opportunities — 



the present, our plans for descriptive labels and other golden and otherwise. Long before these notes were 



aids to the understanding, must be taken "for called for, we resolved that — "the Senate concurring," 



granted," along with what we hope to accomplish in — we would find just the right kind of an Osprey nest 



the photographing of birds, and the introduction of (on Plum Island ?), acquire it honestly, convey it /;/ 



several features hitherto unknown in zoological gar situ to the Zoological Park, and put it in some suita- 



dens. ble place for permanent exhibition. How else can we 



There is one other item that I really must include, do justice to the architectural powers of the greatest 



We all know that the nest of a healthy and reasonably of all American nest builders,— the only genuine rival 



industrious Osprey is, for any museum smaller than of the Australian Talegalla, who regards the whole 



the Crystal Palace, an impossibility. The most in- earth merely as so much raw material to be raked 



teresting nests are to the collector appalling. And, together and flung upon his nest mountain ' So long 



along with that, perhaps not one out of every 100,000 as the Brush-Turkey flourishes, — more power to the 



Americans has ever seen an adult Osprey nest — or tarsus of the Osprey ; and may his supply of fallen 



any other. timber never run short. 



WHITE FLYERS OF THE SEA. 



CHARLES HALLOCK, ST. PAUL, MINN. 



SEA-BIRDS are always interesting to voyagers. 

 They will often follow vessels for incredible 

 distances over the ocean, ever restless and un- 

 tiring. Gulls, in particular, with their long, swift 

 wings, illustrate the highest powers of endurance. 

 They fly with ease against the severest storms. Their 

 pectoral, or breast muscles are one solid mass of 

 firm, hard tissue, and their bones are hollow, having 

 no marrow in them, adapted in every particular for 

 long flights. In fine weather they soar aloft contin- 

 ually, and in rough weather disport among the waves, 

 delighting in the surf caps and combers 



Sailors regard them all with a good deal of super- 

 stition. Of the great ocean Gulls which so unre- 

 mittingly hang in the wake of the fastest steamships, 

 some old salts will tell you they never visit the land 

 except to deposit their eggs, and that sleep is not nec- 

 essary to them ; or rather, that they rest upon their 

 wings, and allow themselves to be cradled by the 

 breezes, whose violence neither worries nor frightens 

 them. None of which statements are exact, for Gulls 

 can rest and sleep as well on the sea as on the land, 

 if the weather be not too tempestuous. But so far 



from their never visiting the land except to deposit 

 their eggs, that is too much of a myth for anyone but 

 a credulous 'foremast hand to believe. So also, their 

 being cradled on the breezes is poetical but not prac- 

 ticable. When they wish to sleep they go ashore into 

 the coves and bights, where there is shelter ; but if 

 too far from land to make it within the se\'eral hours' 

 warning which an approaching storm usually allows, 

 they have to weather it. As Gulls, when far out at 

 sea, can easily make a landfall four hundred miles 

 distant in four hours' time if required, their temerity 

 in remaining out seldom gets the better of their judg- 

 ment ; and even if obliged to remain out, they can 

 rest and recruit their strength by settling down occa- 

 sionally and riding the waves, which they do as 

 buoyantly as a cork. It may be supposed that few 

 of them are ever drowned, though such an event 

 might possibly happen. Nor are they exempt from 

 other hazards of the elements, for there is at least one 

 authenticated instance on record of a Gull being 

 killed by lightning, its wing being torn from its side,^ 

 and the body and pinion falling quite a distance apart. 

 It may be questioned if a Gull is ever found in mid- 



