156 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs, 



Family— FAL CON/ P. R. 



OSPREY. 



Pandiou haliactits, LlNN. 



THE Osprey, or Fishing Eagle, iised to be a far from luiconimon visitor in 

 the spring and autumn to the large estuaries all round our coasts, and was 

 most numerous at the latter season when the majority seen were young birds of 

 the 3'ear. To-day it can only be regarded as rare indeed, although one or two 

 decades since it was frequently observed about Poole Harbour and the mouth of 

 the Hampshire Avon, and on the estuarj' of the Exe, in South Devon. At the 

 beginning of the present century Montagu regarded it as more common in 

 Devonshire than in an}^ other part of the kingdom, and the writer has examined 

 specimens captured in Tor Bay, on Slapton Ley, and on the Exe, in more recent 

 times. He has also seen some very beautiful Hampshire specimens in the fine 

 collection of British Birds formed by Mr. E. Hart, at Christchurch. The only 

 records of the Osprey having nested in the South of England refer to eyries in 

 Devonshire and West Somerset. As late as 1838 a pair of Ospreys nested in 

 Gannet's Combe, on Lundy Island, while in 1847 a pair that had attempted to 

 nest at IMonksilver, in West Somerset, were shot by a keeper. Polwhele, in his 

 History of Devon, says that about forty years before he wrote (in 1797) a single 

 pair of Ospreys bred on a pinnacle of the cliffs at Beer every year, arriving in 

 April and leaving in August. The Osprey was called in that neighbourhood a 

 " Herriot," and the rock this pair built on was known as " Herriot Hill." He 

 also speaks of it as breeding on the coasts of North Devon. In the estuaries of 

 Sussex and Hants, the Osprey goes by the name of " Mullet Hawk," from its 

 partiality to that fish. A favourite station for the bird, on which it would be 

 often seen perched was provided by the stakes set in the mud to mark the channel 

 for ships in the tideway of the river Exe and other rivers. The Osprey feeds 

 exclusively on fish, and is never met with far from the sea- side or from inland waters 

 in consequence, but instances are on record in which it sought variety from its 

 usual diet. Thus, an Osprey was caught a few years since in a trap at Powderham 

 Castle, the beautiful seat of Lord Devon, b}^ a keeper who had noted a large 

 Hawk flj'ing in from the Exe and carrying off his 3'oung Pheasants ; the keeper 



