BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 219 
THE OSPREY. Pandion haliaetus (Linn^us). 
Local names — Fishing Hawk ; Fish-Eagle. 
A very rare visitor. 
There are no authentic records of the nesting of the Osprey 
in Dumfriesshire, though, as has been already pointed out 
(see pp. 201, 203), the birds which nested on the islets on 
Loch Skene and Loch Urr may have been of this species, 
and not the White-tailed Eagle. I know both these lochs, 
and the two are strikingly different in appearance. Loch 
Skene Hes at an altitude of seventeen hundred feet with 
mountains round it a thousand feet higher, as wild a 
looking spot as one could picture. Loch Urr is barely seven 
hundred feet above sea-level, and the ground slopes 
gradually from the water's edge. If we are to credit the 
report of 1792, that " Eagles have been known to breed on 
it,"* I should be inclined to beheve that the Fish-Eagle " 
or Osprey was the species referred to ; but, at this date, 
it is purely a matter of guesswork. Sir WiUiam Jardine 
has made the following MS. note in his private copy of the 
Naturalisfs Library : " Mr. Shaw, Drumlanrig, writes, 1840, 
that he had observed an Osprey perched on a rotten bough 
above the fish cruive (see letter)." Unfortunately, this 
letter cannot now be traced. Dr. Grierson records in his 
diary in 1862 (October 17th) that Thomas Maxwell of 
Allanton Mill told him the Fish-Eagle had never been known 
in Nithsdale. In a letter dated September 13th, 1886, 
the late Professor Alfred Newton wrote to Mr. J. A. Harvie- 
Brown : "My brother has been up and down Galloway 
and is convinced that no Ospreys have bred there for fifteen 
* Stat. Acct. Scot., Vol. II., p. 342. 
