256 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
ON THE FORMER NESTING IN ENGLAND OF THE 
OSPREY, PANDION HALIAETUS. 
By tHe Rev. H. A. Macrpuerson, M.A. 
Dp the Osprey breed in England in the olden days? Prof. 
Newton and Mr. Seebohm both give the suggestion a decided 
negative (cf. Yarrell, ed. 4, vol. i., p. 88; Seebohm, B. B., vol. i., 
p. 57). But I think that, when all the evidence to be adduced is 
laid before them, they may admit that the Osprey used to nest in 
the neighbourhood of the English Lakes. The witnesses that I 
can cite are few, and their statements short; their evidence 
therefore may be given in full. 
Francis Willughby comes first. He says distinctly that the 
Osprey breeds in Westmoreland. ‘‘ There is an aery of them in 
Whinfield Park, Westmoreland, preserved carefully by the 
Countess of Pembroke” (‘ Ornithology,’ p. 21). This refers to 
1676, or a little earlier; but so excellent was the care taken of 
the birds that, in 1787, Clarke, in his ‘ Survey of the Lakes,’ 
again recorded the existence of these birds in the old locality. 
“The Osprey I have seen,” says he: ‘‘ there was a nest, a few 
years ago, of this bird in Whinfield Park: they seem to be of the 
Hawk kind, and are about the size and colour of a Magpye; in 
what manner fish are charmed by them let others tell, for I 
cannot: I saw one fly into the rock at the Giant’s Cave, and on 
its crossing the river there, the fish sprang to the top and 
remained six or eight seconds as if intoxicated ” (‘ Survey of the 
Lakes,’ p. 190). Clarke’s other notes prove that he was a good 
sportsman and a keen observer ; in all likelihood he had never 
seen Willughby’s statement. 
This is, briefly, the case for one eyrie. Two independent 
witnesses call the birds “ Ospreys,” and the first states that the 
birds were thought rare enough to need protection, which explains 
the preservation of the race.* 

** Mr. A. G. More stated, in his essay on ‘ Distribution of Breeding Birds,’ 
that Willughby mentioned a nest of H. albicilla in Whinfield Park, but does 
not seem to have enquired whether that estate included any precipices on 
which that Eagle could nidificate. Asa matter of fact it does not, having 
been originally a wild heath; in Clarke’s time it was reclaimed, divided into 
farms, “the rabbits destroyed, and the deer circumscribed in narrower 
bounds; by which means the red-deer are much diminished in number” 
(‘Survey of the Lakes,’ p. 5). Doubtless the Ospreys of Whinfield Park 
