AMERICAN OSPREY. 
29 
sustenance. His docility and adroitness in catching fish have 
also sometimes been employed by man for his advantage. 
Intent on exploring the sea for his food, he leaves the nest 
and proceeds directly to the scene of action, sailing round in 
easy and wide circles, and turning at times as on a pivot, ap- 
parently without exertion, while his long and curving wings 
seem scarcely in motion. At the height of from one hundred 
to two hundred feet he continues to survey the bosom of the 
deep. Suddenly he checks his course and hovers in the air 
with beating pinions ; he then descends with rapidity, but the 
wily victim has escaped. Now he courses near the surface, and 
by a dodging descent, scarcely wetting his feet, he seizes a fish, 
which he sometimes drops, or yields to the greedy Eagle ; but, 
not discouraged, he again ascends in spiral sweeps to regain 
the higher regions of the air and renew his survey of the watery 
expanse. His prey again espied, he descends perpendicularly 
like a falling plummet, plunging into the sea with a loud, rush- 
ing noise and with an unerring aim. In an instant he emerges 
with the struggling prey in his talons, shakes off the water 
from his feathers, and now directs his laborious course to land, 
beating in the wind with all the skill of a practised seaman. 
The fish which he thus carries may be sometimes from six to 
eight pounds ; and so firm sometimes is the penetrating grasp 
of his talons that when by mistake he engages with one which 
is too large, he is dragged beneath the waves, and at length 
both fish and bird perish. 
From the nature of its food, the flesh, and even the eggs, are 
rendered exceedingly rank and nauseous. Though its prey is 
generally taken in the bold and spirited manner described, an 
Osprey sometimes sits on a tree over a pond for an hour at 
a time, quietly waiting its expected approach. 
Unlike other rapacious birds, these may be almost con- 
sidered gregarious, breeding so near each other that, accord- 
ing to Mr. Gardiner, there were on the small island on which 
he resided, near to the eastern extremity of Long Island 
(New York), no less than three hundred nests with young. 
Wilson observed twenty of their nests within half a mile. I 
have seen them nearly as thick about Rehoboth Bay in Dela- 
