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ABOUT THE OSPREY. 
fly until their plumage is complete ; and, meantime, their parents 
provide them plentifully with all kinds of food. 
There are eagles — and eagles. The osprey is sometimes called 
the fishing eagle, but, more correctly, the fish -hawk. Pandion 
halicetus is rightly described as a formidable and strong-winged bird, 
which preys on the finny tribes that teem in the American bays, 
ci'eeks, and rivers ; securing his prey by his own activity, skill, and 
industry ; and apparently resorting to the land only as a resting-place, 
or in the usual season, for the purposes of incubation. He builds his 
nest usually on the top of a dead or decaying tree, at elevations 
varying from fifteen to fifty feet above the ground. Wilson says that 
the fisher-folk have remarked that the most vigorous tree perishes in 
a few years after the fish-hawk has taken possession of it. Whether 
this be attributable to the fish-oil, or the bird's ordure, or the wet salt 
materials of which its nest is composed, or to all thi-ee causes combined, 
the reader may determine for himself Externally it is built up of 
large sticks, from half an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, and 
two or three feet in length, piled up four or five feet high, and two or 
three feet broad ; and so intermixed with sea- weed, corn-stalks, clods of 
wet turf, stems of mullein, and dry sea-grass as a lining, that the 
whole forms a mass conspicuous half a mile off, and suflicient to prove 
a considerable load for a horse. 
The flight of the osprey, his manoeuvres while in search of fish, 
and his mode of capturing his victim, deserve particular attention. So 
Wilson tells us ; and he had closely studied the " physiology " of the 
bird. When he leaves his nest, he generally makes direct for the sea ; 
then in graceful curving lines, and moving as on a pivot, sails round 
and round, apparently without the slightest eflfort or any stir of his 
wings. The elevation to which he gi-adually rises varies from one 
hundred to two hundred feet, or even more ; yet he is still able to 
keep a watchful eye on the surface of the great deep. All at once he 
pauses as if fixed in air, flaps his wings, and directs his gaze to a 
particular object. This object, however, he abandons ; that is to say, 
it has disappeared ; and he resumes his easy, sailing motion. Again 
