312 THE EFFECTS OF COLD. 
and built entirely of sticks—the same nest being 
invariably used year after year by the same 
pair of birds. Their food consists mainly of fish, 
and it isacurious sight to watch an eagle plunge 
into the water, seize a heavy salmon, and rise 
with it without any apparent difficulty. Both 
the osprey and bald-headed eagle fish with their 
claws, never, as far as I have observed them, 
striking at a fish with the beak; during winter 
they collect, young and old together, round the 
Sumass lake; and as the cold becomes intense, 
they sit three and four on the limb of a pine- 
tree, or in a semi-stupid state, all their craft and 
courage gone, blinking and drowsy as an owl in 
daytime. 
I have often, when walking under the trees 
where these half-torpid monarchs of the air sit 
side by side, fired and knocked one out from 
betwixt its neighbours, without causing them 
the slightest apparent alarm; three I picked up 
one morning frozen stiff as marble, having fallen 
dead from off their perch. 
Why birds so powerfully winged should prefer 
to remain where the winters are sufliciently 
intense to freeze them to death, rather than go 
southward, where food is equally abundant, is a 
mystery Iam unable to explain. Towards the 
