OSPREY
Pandion haliaetus (Linn.).
OSPKEY.
PANDION HALIAETUS {Linn).
Falco haliaetus, Linn. S. N. i. p. 129 (1766).
Falco haliaetos, Naum. i. p. 241.
Pandion haliaetus, Macg. iii. p. 239; Dresser, vi. p. 139.
Pandion haliaeetus, Hewitson, i. p. 19.; Yarr. ed. 4, i. p. 30.
Balbusard, French; Fluss-Adler, Fisch-Adler, German;
Aguila pescador, Spanish.
These beautiful birds visit Great Britain in March,
and are too often massacred during their short stay
on the English estuaries on their way to their nesting-
haunts in Scotland and Northern Europe. In 1832
Sir William Jardine, as quoted in Yarrell’s ‘British
Birds,’ wrote that a pair or two might be found about
most of the Highland Lochs, where they built either
on ruined towers or , aged trees. Between 1849 and
1857 Mr. Wolley found that so many Ospreys had
been destroyed in the Scottish Highlands that most
of their recorded breeding-places were deserted, and
at the present day a very few pairs only annually
breed there under strict and most laudable protection.
The Osprey returns southwards about the beginning
of September, and on both passages frequently follows
the course of rivers to a considerable distance from