OSPREY SAND-EEL CARRION-FEEDING BIRDS. 259 



The rough and strong feet of the osprey are perfectly 

 adapted to the use which they are put to, that is, catching 

 and holding the slippery and strong sea-trout or grilse. The 

 fact of a bird darting down from a height in the air, and 

 securing a fish in deep water, seems almost incredible, 

 especially when we consider the rapidity with which a fish, 

 and particularly a sea-trout, darts away at the slightest 

 shadow of danger, and also when we consider that the bird 

 who catches it is not even able to swim, but must secure its 

 prey by one single dash made from a height of perhaps 

 fifty feet. 



The swiftest little creature in the whole sea is the sand-eel; 

 and yet the terns catch thousands of these fish in the same 

 way as the osprey catches the trout ; excepting that the tern 

 uses its sharp-pointed bill instead of its feet. I have often 

 taken up the sand-eels which the terns have dropped on being 

 alarmed, and have invariably found that the little fish had 

 but one small wound, immediately behind the head. That a 

 bird should catch such a little slippery, active fish as a sand- 

 eel, in the manner in which a tern catches it, seems almost in- 

 conceivable ; and yet every dweller on the sea-coast sees it 

 done every hour during the period that these birds frequent 

 our shores. In nature nothing is impossible; and when we are 

 talking of habits and instincts, no such word as impossibility 

 should be used. 



I never could quite understand the instinct which leads 

 carrion-feeding birds to their food. We frequently see 

 ravens, buzzards, and other birds of similar habits congre- 

 gating round the dead body of an animal almost immediately 

 after it has ceased to live ; and therefore I cannot agree with 

 those naturalists who assert that it is the sense of smelling 

 which leads these birds to their feast. From my own 

 observation I am convinced that this is not the case, as I have 

 known half a dozen buzzards collect round a dead cat, on 

 the afternoon of the same day on which it had been killed, 

 and this, too, during the winter season, when the dead 

 animal could have emitted no odour strong enough to attract 

 its devourers. I am far more inclined to attribute their 

 facility in finding out their food to a quick sense of sight. 

 For the sake of catching these birds and the grey crows also, 

 I was accustomed to have the dead vermin thrown into a 

 field near the house where traps were placed round them. 

 When the cats were skinned, and therefore were the more 



