156 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
Family—FALCONID-E. 
OSPREY. 
Pandion haliactus, LANN. 
HE Osprey, or Fishing Eagle, used to be a far from uncommon 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 year. 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 estuary of the Exe, in South Devon. At the 
beginning of the present century Montagu regarded it as more common in 
Devonshire than in any 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 4 pair that had attempted to 
nest at Monksilver, 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, by a keeper who had noted a large 
Hawk flying in from the Exe and carrying off his young Pheasants; the keeper 
