38 
FALCO HALIiETUS. 
it feeds on chickens, birds, hares, and other animals. It 
is also said to catch fish during* the night ; and that the 
noise of its plunging into the water is heard at a great 
distance. But, in the descriptions of these writers, this 
bird has been so frequently confounded with the osprey, 
as to leave little doubt that the habits and manners of 
the one have been often attributed to both ; and others 
added that are common to neither. 
Subgenus iii.— fandion, sa Vigny. 
6. FALCO HALIMTUS, LINN. FISH-HAWK, OR OSPREY, WILSON.* 
WILSON, PL. XXXVII. FIG. I. EDINBURGH COLLEGE MUSEUM. 
This formidable, vigorous-winged, and well known 
bird, subsists altogether on the finny tribes that swarm 
in our bays, creeks, and rivers ; procuring his prey by 
his own active skill and industry; and seeming no 
farther dependent on the land than as a mere resting 
place, or, in the usual season, a spot of deposit for 
his nest, eggs, and young. 
The fish-hawk is migratory, arriving on the coasts 
of New York and New Jersey about the twenty-first of 
March, and retiring to the south about the twenty- 
second of September. Heavy equinoctial storms may 
vary these periods of arrival and departure a few days ; 
but long observation has ascertained, that they are kept 
with remarkable regularity. On the arrival of these 
birds in the northern parts of the United States, in 
March, they sometimes find the bays and ponds frozen, 
and experience a difficulty in procuring fish for many 
days. Yet there is no instance on record of their 
attacking birds, or inferior land animals, with intent 
* It is also a European species. 
