Class II. OSPREY. 215 



shores. Mr. Oedman flings new light on its 

 history ; he says, that it breeds on the tops of 

 the highest trees,* and makes its nest with 

 wonderful art of the twigs of the fir-tree, and Nest. 

 lines the bottom with polypodies. It lays three 

 eggs of the size of those of a hen, marbled 

 with rust color. It brings fish and serpents 

 to feed its young, and even eels of a large size, 

 which renders its nest very fetid. It feeds Food. 

 chiefly on fish, j" taking them in the same manner 

 as the sea eagle does, not by swimming but by 

 precipitating itself on them ; its feet being formed 

 like those of other birds of prey, for the left is 

 not at all palmated, as some, copying the errors 

 of antient writers, assert it to be. The Italians 

 compare the violent descent of this bird on its 

 prey, to the fall of lead into the water, and call 

 it, Augulsta plumbum, or the leaden eagle. 



The bird here described was a female ; its Descrip- 

 tion. 

 weight was sixty-two ounces : the length twenty- 

 three inches ; the breadth five feet four inches ; 

 the wing when closed reached beyond the end of 

 the tail ; that, as in all the hawk kind, consisted 

 of twelve feathers; the two middle feathers 



* Mr. Montagu in his Ornithological dictionary says, that he 

 observed the nest of an Osprey, on the top of the chimney of 

 a ruined building in the island of Loch Lomond. Ed. 



f Turner says it preys also on coots, and other water fowl. 



