150 



WILD AXIMALS OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK. 



From Biological Survey. 



Fig. 54. — Sparrow hawk. 



fidult was seen at Glacier Park carrying a mouse, while a young 

 one sat in a dead tree containing a nesting hole, and a family 

 of young seen in a burn along the Swiftcurrent trail were being 



fed in a tree top. Two Avere also seen at 

 St. Mary Lake chasing a goshawk, and 

 one was fourd at Big Pi'airie, on the 

 North Fork of the Flathead. 



Family PANDIONID/E: Ospreys. 



Ospret; Fish Hawk: Pandlon hall- 

 aetus vafollncnsis. — A note from the sky, 

 followed by a shadow projected over the 

 green water of Lake Josephine, drew my 

 r.ttention to a large, whitedieaded, brown- 

 backed bird, white underneath to the 

 linings of its long, outstretched wings. 

 As I watched, higher and higher it rose 

 in the sky until it was no longer to be 

 seen in the blue. Had the osprey wandered across from a distant 

 r.'est to investigate the fishing'* It is said to live throughout the 

 park wherever there are fish and the Upjier St. Mary, near Reynolds 

 Creek, the Swiftcurrent above Sherburne Lake, and the southern 

 Waterton Lake all boast ancestral nests. 



A fish hawk's or osprey's nest is one of the most interesting ornith- 

 ological features of the landscape. Built, as on the Swiftcurrent, 

 on top of a broken-ofi dead tree, where it can be seen for miles 

 around, the great gray mass of sticks grows higher and higher as 

 the j'ears pass, and one who has once made the acquaintance of the 

 family will welcome their return each spring, sure of rare enter- 

 tainment in watching them rear their young. The nest on the 

 Swiftcurrent, easily watched from the high embankment above the 

 creek, was on a dead limby spruce about 40 feet from the ground 

 and was perhaps 4 feet wide by 2^- feet high. 



When I first went to watcli the nest from the point on the embank- 

 ment that I named Fish Hawk Point, one of the parents — let us 

 say the mother — stood on the tip of a tall spruce commanding lioth 

 nest and surrounding landscape. On Guard, her picture might have 

 been labeled. In the nest white flashes came from the moving young, 

 away in the distant background were seen the forested slope of the 

 moraine, and above, the bare, rocky cliff, gilded by the afternoon 

 light. Down the river the other parent was fishing, his loud peeping 

 yelp-elp-elp-elp being heard as he flew, now over the trees, now 



