BIRDS OF NEW YORK 105 



inches. The food, as already intimated, consists principally of grass- 

 hoppers and mice. Small birds are occasionally taken, but this little 

 falcon is mostly a harmless and certainly an interesting neighbor. 



Family PANDIONIDAE 



Ospreys 



Character. Beak inflated except at base and much hooked, without 

 tooth or festoon; nostrils oblique, oval, in the edge of the cere; eye shield 

 rudimentary; scapular process of the coracoid not reaching furculum; 

 tarsus roughly reticulate ; the large and, powerful feet with rough and spiny 

 scales for holding their finny prey; all the toes free and the outer one 

 versatile; talons extremely large, sharp and much curved; legs long and 

 closely feathered; the tarso-metatarsus contains a bony canal for the 

 extensor tendon of the toes; this and the versatile character of the outer 

 toe, as well as the aftershafted pltimage, the blending of the deep plantar 

 tendons and the presence of a scapula accessoria, suggesting relationship 

 to the owls; the plumage, however, is close, oily and imbricated, the quills 

 and tail feathers stifif and pointed and the coeca are wanting. 



The ospreys or Fish hawks are birds of powerful flight, and their 

 long, curved talons, as well as the granular-spiny • palms of their feet, are 

 admirably adapted for seizing and holding their slippery prey. Although 

 they feed almost exclusively upon fish, it is usually considered that they 

 do little harm, as the species which they capture are taken in shallow water 

 and, consequently, consist of varieties least valuable for food. At any 

 rate, they are never so abundant that their depredations are especially 

 annoying and the picturesqueness which they and their nests lend to the 

 landscape is ample reward for the slight toll they take from the finny tribes. 

 This family, or suborder, as some would make it, consists of only three 

 species and is nearly cosmopolitan in range. 



