OSPREY. 27 



have the effect, in a few years, of destroying the tree in which 

 it has been placed. The male partially assists the female in 

 the business of incubation, and at other times keeps near her, 

 and provides her with food she sits accordingly very close. 

 Both birds, when the young are hatched, share the task of 

 feeding them with fish, and have even been seen to supply 

 them when they have left the nest and have been on the 

 wing themselves; they both also courageously defend them 

 against all aggressors, both human and others. They only rear 

 one brood in the year. If one of the parents happen to be 

 killed, the other is almost sure to return, ere long, with a 

 fresh mate: where procured, as in other similar cases, is indeed 

 a mystery. 



The nest of the Osprey is an immense pile of twigs, small 

 and large sticks and branches, some of them an inch and a 

 half in diameter the whole forming sometimes a mass easily 

 discernible at the distance of half a mile or more, and in 

 quantity enough to fill a cart. How it is that it is not blown 

 down, or blown to pieces by a gale of wind, is a question 

 which has yet to be explained. It occasionally is heaped up 

 to the height of four or five feet, or even eight, and is from 

 two to three feet in breadth, interlaced and compacted with 

 sea- weed, stalks of corn, grass, or turf; the whole, in conse- 

 quence of annual repairs and additions, which even in human 

 dwellings often make a house so much larger than it was 

 originally intended to be, not to say unsightly, becoming by 

 degrees of the character described above. It is built either on 

 a tree, at a height of from six, seven, or eight to fifteen feet, 

 and from that to fifty feet from the ground; on a forsaken 

 building, or the ruins of some ancient fortress, erected on the 

 edge of a Highland Loch, the chimney, if the remains of one 

 are in existence, being generally preferred, or on the summit 

 of some insular crag; in fact, it accommodates itself easily to 

 any suitable and favourable situation. Bewick, erroneously 

 following "Willughby, (and Mudie him,) says that the Osprey 

 builds its nest 'on the ground, among reeds' it very rarely 

 indeed does so. It is a curious fact that smaller birds frequently 

 build their nests in the outside of those of the Osprey, without 

 molestation on the one hand, or fear on the other. Larger 

 birds also build theirs in the immediate vicinity, without any 

 disturbance on the part of either. 



The eggs, which are sometimes only two in number, but 

 occasionally three, and in some instances, but very rarely, as 



