Descriptive List 175 



This bird nests in hollow trees, using little if any lining to the hole. The eggs 

 are four or five in number, of a creamy white ground-color, variously marked ■svith 

 different shades of brown. Size 1.38 x 1.11. 



32. FAMILY PANDIONID^. OSPREYS 



Genus Pandion (Sav.) 

 159. Pandion haliseetus carolinensis (Gmel.). Osprey. 



Descriptioti. — Dark lirown al)o^■e, tail grayish with narrow black bars; head, neck, and lower 

 parts mo.stly white: sides of head with a dark .stripe; female with brea.st more heavily spotted 

 than male. L., 2.3.00; W., 18.00; T., 8..50. Extent of wings about 5 ft. 



Range. — North and South America. 



Range in North Carolina. — Whole State in summer, common on the coast, rare elsewhere. 



The Osprey or Fish Hawk is a common bird along our coast, but inland appears 

 to be only a transient, occurring at Raleigh from late March to early May, and 

 also in August. Cairns recorded it from Buncombe County in April, and Pearson 

 from Guilford County in May, 1900. 



Along our coast-line, where water conditions are favorable, the Osprey breeds 

 plentifully. While a number of scattered nests have come under our observation, 

 two bodies of water stand out preeminently as nesting places for this bird. Around 

 the borders of Great Lake, in Craven County, twenty-five or thirty pairs annually 

 rear their young. On the rice reserve pond on the Orton plantation, in Brunswick 

 •County, there is another colony of not less than thirty-five pairs of breeding birds. 



At one end of Orton pond are many stumps and dead cypress trunks. Some of 

 these are mere shells, for standing cypress wood will withstand more years of 

 ■\veather than any one man can remember. On these stumps are placed many of 

 the Osprey nests. A few are so low that the contents may be seen by standing 

 in a boat. More are from eight to twenty feet above the water, and a few of those 

 on the shore-line are as high as thirty feet or over. A few are found on li\ang 

 cypresses, either standing in the water or on shore. 



On Great Lake the nests are nearly all placed in cypresses standing in the water. 

 One is in a pine on shore. Of the hundred and more Osprey nests observed by us 

 in North Carolina during the past few j'ears, probably nine-tenths were built over 

 the water. In fact, this seems to be always the case where the birds nest in colo- 

 nies. The trees chosen sometimes stand back a half mile or more from water, but 

 in such instances there appears never to be more than one nest in a neighborhood. 



The nests are enormous structures, added to from year to year until some of 

 them look as if they would fill the body of an ordinary farm cart. The Osprey is 

 a rather early nester, the young often being hatched late in April or in early May. 



The diet of this bird is exclusively fish at all seasons of the year. Its food 

 during the nesting period seems to consist principally of menhaden, which the 

 old birds in mam' instances must travel at least ten miles to catch. When fish- 

 ing, the Osprey hovers for a moment and then darts downward with a headlong 

 plunge that throws the spray high in air. The fish is always carried head first in 

 the talons of the bird. The Bald Eagle often appears and takes ■\\'ithout apology 

 or explanation the captured fish. 



