22 THE HOME-LIFE OF 
feed on dead fish—not, however, in the manner of the 
Bald Eagle, after the fish have become decayed on the 
shore. It is to the credit of the Osprey that, unlike the 
‘“ King of Birds,” he is no scavenger! When the fishermen 
collect their daily catch at the nets, they throw away useless 
fish, which sometimes die and float on the surface. It 
is these that the Ospreys occasionally appropriate, usually 
not more than an hour after death. No other instances 
were observed of the birds taking dead fish. 
As an example of a wholly abnormal perversion of diet, 
the following incident has been given me by Mr. R. C. 
Murphy, Curator of Birds in the Brooklyn Museum: 
“About the first of September, 1903, the postmaster 
at Mount Sinai, Long Island, told me that a large hawk 
had been killed by one of his neighbours in the act of raiding 
a poultry-yard. I called at the place immediately, which 
was a small farm, where one woman lived alone, about 
two-and-a-half miles from the nearest water. Upon asking 
for the bird, I was surprised to find not one of the so-called 
“hen hawks,’ but an adult Fish-Hawk. The woman told 
me that on the afternoon of the previous day, which had 
been rainy, she had been disturbed by a commotion among 
her chickens, and on going into her yard, had found the 
Hawk with its talons sunk in a hen, and flapping violently 
in an attempt to fly off with its prey. She had killed the 
robber with a stick, and had freed the hen, which, however, 
died during the night. The Hawk which she gave me, 
was in a starved and emaciated condition, and was, of 
course, much bedraggled from lying out of doors in the rain. 
I preserved only portions of its skeleton.” 
Occasional frogs* or water-snakest form about the 
only other variation from the piscine bill-of-fare of the 
Osprey, and these can hardly be regarded as evidences 
of abnormal appetite in a bird accustomed to capture fish 
and eels. 
* Gentry, ‘‘ Life Histories of the Birds of Pennsylvania,” II., p. 278. 
+ Spreadborough, in Macoun’s ‘‘ Catalogue of Canadian Birds,” p. 288. 
