THE WHITE-TAILED EAGLE. 
9 
it probable that one bird feeds the other wliile sitting on the 
eggs. It is also asserted that the male regularly takes his 
turn at the duty of incubation. The stomach contained, among 
some newly-digested fragments, an entire puffin.” 
In a footnote to the above, Mr Edmondston adds — I may 
mention a curious circumstance which happened to him two 
or three years ago with the same pair of birds. In getting to 
the eyrie he found two young ones in it, but thinking them too 
young to remove, he only took the odd egg always found, in- 
tending to return in a few days for the young, which he did, 
but found that the old birds had removed both nest and 
young to a considerable distance from the first place, and on 
the other side of a deep creek or 'gyo,’ as it is vernacularly 
termed, and there the nest has remained ever since.” 
THE OSPEEY. 
Fanclion halice'dtus. 
FISH HAWK. 
In the Shetland Islands the Osprey is known only as a 
straggler, appearing at long and uncertain intervals, and then, 
as a rule, but singly, although my brother-in-law records the 
simultaneous appearance of three or four in the spring of 
1843, and of a pair some years previously. Specimens are 
very seldom procured, but when one of these birds chances 
to be in the neighbourhood it is so sure to resort sooner or 
later to the best locality for sea-trout, that by concealing 
one’s self near the mouth of the burn an excellent view of the 
bird may be obtained. It is generally shy, but, like most 
rapacious birds, will become almost heedless of danger when 
bent upon remedying the occasional long periods of fasting to 
which their mode of living subjects them. One autumn 
morning, as I was walking along a cliff above the sands at 
Burrafirth, an Osprey swooped down within ten feet of my 
