168 REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 



Family PANDIONID^l. 



THE FISH HAWKS. 



364 Pandion haliaetus carolinensis (Gmelin). 

 Osprey. Fish Hawk. 



Adult male. Length, 21-25. Wing, 17-21. Above, grayish-brown; tail 

 barred with dusky and tipped with white; head, neck and under parts, white, 

 a dusky stripe on the side of the head and some dusky feathers on the crown ; 

 sometimes with spots or blotches of brown on the breast. 



Adult female. Similar, but breast always with brown spots. 



Young in first year with light edgings to the feathers of the upper parts. 



Nest very bulky, of sticks, etc., in a tree top ; eggs, two or three, cream 

 blotched with chestnut-brown, 2.40 x 1.80. 



Formerly an abundant summer resident along the sea coast and 

 Delaware Bay, March 20th to November., but of late years greatly re- 

 duced in numbers, though still a familiar bird along the coast. 



The enormous nest, occupying the top of some dead tree, is a 

 familiar sight. Often both birds are perched upon it and perhaps 

 we can see the heads of the young also. The old bird, when disturbed, 

 utters its peculiar whistling cry quite unlike most hawk calls. The 

 Fish Hawks are fearless birds, nesting close to houses and even on 

 platforms built for their use on poles planted in the farmer's fields, or 

 on telegraph poles. They often make use of very low trees, and in 

 some instances though not in New Jersey, so far as I am aware 

 nest on the ground. 



They fly out over the bay or ocean in search of their prey, and 

 diving from considerable altitudes, come up with the fish wriggling 

 in their talons. When Bald Eagles were more abundant along the 

 coast many a Fish Hawk was pursued and compelled to drop his prey 

 so that the Eagle might grasp it and carry it off. The Fish Hawk 

 never attempts to pick up a fish that he has dropped but goes patiently 

 back to the sea and catches another. The birds are now most abundant 

 along the northern coast of New Jersey where they have always been 

 carefully protected and on the mainland of the Cape May peninsula. 

 On the coast islands the persecution of egg collectors and the spread 



