the feat performed by the fishing eagle. Take as an example of the others
the actions of the noble bird the white-headed sea-eagle. As it circles
over the blue water its gaze is fixed and intent. Flight seems
automatic--steady, fairly swift, rippleless. Immediately a fish is
sighted, attitudes and poses become comparatively strained and awkward.
Flight is checked by the enormous brake-power of outspread tail, and
backward beating wing. The eagle poises over the spot, stretches out its
legs, and extends its talons to the utmost; flies down in a series of
zig-zags, and with the facial expression of the dirty boy undergoing the
torture of face-washing, plunges breast first with outstretched wings
with a mighty splash into the water. Disappearing for four or five
seconds, it finds it no easy task to rise with a two-pound mullet.

Splendid as the feat undoubtedly is, it does not coincide with the
description usually given. Have we not often been told of the headlong,
lightning like drop that almost baffles eyesight? The circumstance that
baffles is that fish are so unobservant or so slow that they do not
always, in place of sometimes, escape. For the excuse of the fish it must
be acknowledged that very few members of the tribe are fitted with eyes
for star-gazing. The eagle captures a dinner, not by the exercise of any
very remarkable fleetness or adaptiveness or passion for fishing, but
because of certain physical limitations on the part of the fish.


"As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature."


The subserviency of fish to the osprey was noted by the ancients, who
attributed a fabulous power of fascination to the bird so that as it flew