THE OSPREY. 17 
The variety of nesting-material employed by Ospreys 
was well exemplified in the easily examined ground 
nests. The main composition is of rough sticks and 
branches, driftwood, brush, clods of earth, cow-dung, and 
horse-dung, dried herbage and plant stalks, bark, seaweed, 
eel-grass, and moss. ‘The softer materials are used to 
form the broad, flat, bed of the nest, only a small portion 
of which is required to contain the eggs. That flotsam 
and jetsam of any kind come not amiss as supplementary 
structural material, may be judged by the following catalogue 
of heterogeneous oddities, personally observed by me in 
Ospreys’ nests: strip of oilcloth, newspaper, cork-floats 
for nets, long string of conch’s “ eggs,” tow, dead crab, 
rung of a chair, wheel of a child’s mail-cart, half a barrel- 
head, barrel-staves, large piece of white canvas, stake with 
piece of rope tied to it, part of a fisherman’s net, sheep’s 
wool, straw bottle-cover, coloured paper flour-bag, turtle’s 
back, boards from boxes, dead skate, ropes up to five yards 
long, bones, sacking, bottle corks, skeletons of dead birds 
(White-winged Scoter, Red-breasted Merganser, Horned 
Grebe, Pheasant and Common ‘Tern identified), wing of 
Black Duck, large whelk and conch shells, small shells, 
stones and pebbles. The Ospreys gather their nest- 
materials on the beach and in the fields, and they have 
also been seen to break off the dead branches of trees by 
dropping upon them and grasping them with their 
talons.* Although the time of active nest-building is in 
early May, the birds are continually adding to and 
repairing their homes. Well on in July they may be seen 
sailing about with a large bough or trailing bunch of 
eel-grass in their talons. 
The size of the nests varies as much as the kind of building 
material employed. It is reasonable to suppose that the 
largest nests are usually the oldest, annual repairs for 
successive occupations having gradually increased the bulk 
* Chapman, ‘‘ Bird-Lore,” X., 1908, p. 153; and Kearton, ‘‘Our Rarer British 
Breeding Birds,” p. 64. 
