Below Philadelphia, and in the south-eastern counties of Pennsylvania bordering on the Delaware, individuals have been occasionally observed. Their arrival is about the beginning of March, often when the streams which they frequent are fettered with icy bonds, and their departure occurs about the twenty-fifth of September, and frequently, especially when the weather is remarkably fine, as late as the fifteenth of October. Well-established communities, numbering more than fifty pairs, have been met within the swamps of Southern New Jersey, among whom the best order and most perfect harmony prevailed. Few species display less shyness and greater confidence, or are more eminently social, as is particularly shown when these birds take up their quarters in close proximity to occupied dwellings, or by the side of frequented by-paths and highways. Where undisturbed, the same localities are visited year after year. Their exclusive piscine habits secure for them free and unlimited sway in their carefully chosen abodes, for the poultry has nothing to fear, and the smaller birds are not intimidated by their presence and sent screaming to their coverts as they do even when pursued by the little sparrow hawk. Wilson cites a case where four nests of the common purple grackle were built within the interstices of an Osprey’s nest, and a fifth on an adjoining branch, and the Osprey was quite tolerant of such intrusion and freedom. The writer has observed a nest of the grackle built in a similar position, while all around the great Hawk’s home, and scarcely five rods distant, were nests of the robin, wood thrush, red-winged blackbird and others, and no annoyance was known to occur, the Ospreys carefully attending to their own business and scarcely noticing their more humble brethren. Their bitterest enemy is the white-headed eagle, against whom the united attacks of many of these birds are concentrated when he has the audacity to venture within their hunting-grounds or breeding-quarters, for they are too familiar with his powerful muscularity and courageous disposition to attempt a single attack. When an Osprey is pursued by this king of the forest and hunting-ground, his loud, vociferous cries of distress, resounding far and near, evoke an army of defenders, who come with all possible speed to wreak vengeance upon the great arch-enemy of their pleasures and happiness. These attacks are made for the purpose of compelling the Osprey to drop his prey or disgorge, which the superior bird, if his efforts have been successful, pounces down upon and seizes before it has had time to reach the water or ground. [Illustration: NEST OF AMERICAN OSPREY. Manner of Securing Food for Young.]