OSPREY. 
G 
The Plate shows the plumage of a young bird when fully fledged and shortly before being able to quit the 
nest. I particularly noticed the manner in which all the young, that I have had an opportunity of watching, 
carried their wings. The shoulders arc drooped and brought far forward ; and this position, to the best of my 
knowledge, they usually retain while standing. The younger and weaker birds but seldom rise on their feet. 
The colours of the soft parts were — iris deep chrome-yellow ; beak black; cere blue-black; legs and feet a pale 
livid flesh, claws black. 
The adults are so well known that there is not the slightest necessity for illustrating them. TV hat age the 
bird may be before it assumes the perfectly mature dress, I am unable to state, except from conjecture ; but 
I should imagine it is not put on before the third or possibly the fourth year. 
A specimen I shot on May 20 on Breydon mud flats showed less white about the head, and considerably 
more dark feathers among the markings on the breast, than any of the birds I have seen at their breeding- 
quarters. From the date of its capture, it evidently could not have paired and nested that season, and I should 
imagine it was a bird in the second year. The back had lost all of the light-coloured edgings that appear on the 
feathers of the young in their first plumage ; and the only difference I could detect from the adults was, as 
previously stated, on the head and breast. The legs and feet were more deeply tinted with greenish blue 
than I ever observed on any other fresh-killed specimen. In a pair shot at their nest the feet and legs of 
the male were of the very palest livid white, with only the slightest tinge of bluish green ; while in the case 
of the female the colour was a pale fleshy white, almost the same that I have observed in the nestlings. 
The tint of the legs and feet must, I should be of opinion, if any faith is to be put in the coloured plates in 
most works, vary considerably in different individuals. Here is the description of the above-mentioned pair, 
taken from my note-book : — “ The male and female were alike in plumage, and only differed in the male being 
by far the smallest. Iris bright king’s yellow ; beak black ; cere cobalt-blue : legs and feet by no means so 
bluish green as usually depicted ; in the female especially the colour was a pale livid flesh.” 
