218 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



White-tailed or Sea Eagle having ever nested at Whinfield Park 

 is self-evident to any one who knows the physical character of 

 the country. Of ' present-day ' Ospreys there is not much to 

 say, because the visits of this fine bird to the former fishing- 

 grounds of its kind are irregular, and occur chiefly of course at 

 the seasons of migration. Mrs. Howard tells us, in a little work 

 written about 1831, * that an old oak standing on the banks of the 

 Eden, in the grounds of Corby Castle, was known as the " Osprey 

 Eagle tree," so called from having been the resort of these 

 voracious birds which feed on salmon.' 1 An Osprey appeared 

 on the Eden at RocklifFe on September 27, 1883, and was 

 mobbed by Rooks. Another was trapped in Barron Wood, near 

 the Eden, in September 1869. It was caught in a pole trap, and 

 was described in all the local newspapers as ' a fine brown eagle.' 

 Whin's pond, Edenhall, has on several occasions attracted the 

 attention of travelling Ospreys, and it was there that a fine 

 female Osprey was shot in 1848, curiously enough in the middle 

 of summer. Another Osprey was killed at Clifton, close to the 

 former eyrie of the Osprey at Whinfell, on the 27th of Septem- 

 ber 1890. The man who shot it wounded it in one of the 

 wings ; the maimed bird fought for life so gamely that he had 

 great difficulty in overpowering the poor thing. In the west of 

 Cumberland Mr. J. W. Harris obtained an Osprey shot on the 

 Derwent, and Dr. Parker secured another example at Gosforth 

 in 1881. I have not traced the Osprey on Windermere or any 

 of the lakes near Morecambe Bay, but Durnford notes that an 

 Osprey was shot near Barrow, on the 11th of May 1877, and I 

 have information of one or two other Ospreys having been killed 

 on the same part of the coast. 



Order STEGANOPODES. Fam. PELEGANIDjE. 



CORMORANT. 



Phalacrocorax carbo (L.). 



Although the Cormorant does not breed on our coast, it visits 

 several of the lakes of the interior at frequent intervals, and 

 1 Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 97. 



