_Pandion haliaëtus_, the Osprey or Fish-Hawk, nearly cosmopolitan {181}in range, though local everywhere, and absent from many of the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland, and America south of Brazil, is dark brown above, with the short crest, head, nape, and lower parts white; the crown being streaked with blackish, and a brown band–which becomes in the male a series of spots–crossing the chest. The bill is dusky, the cere and feet are bluish, and the irides yellow. The smaller Australasian _P. leucocephalus_ and the American _P. carolinensis_ barely attain sub-specific rank. A migrant to Britain, this bird formerly bred at Ulleswater, and not uncommonly in Scotland, where two or three pairs still remain. Of old it often occupied rocky islets or ruins in Highland lochs, but the nest is usually placed in other countries on trees or sea-cliffs, and exceptionally on the ground; trees being the favourite site in America, in which country colonies are sometimes formed, consisting of even three hundred pairs. The bulky flattish pile of sticks and turf, lined with moss, grass, or seaweed, is invariably placed near water, and contains three, or rarely four, whitish eggs, beautifully blotched or overspread with dark brown, crimson, or claret-colour, varied with orange, buff or grey, New World specimens being usually duller. Surface-swimming fish form the food, and magnificent indeed is the spectacle when an Osprey, after poising itself vertically aloft, descends with terrific dash and splashing plunge to rise again with its captured prey grasped in its roughened toes. The graceful flight is varied by many evolutions and spiral ascents, while the loud piercing scream is chiefly heard at the nesting-quarters. Of fossil Falconine forms, excluding existing species, _Lithornis vulturinus_ is found in the London Clay (Lower Eocene); from the Upper Eocene of France comes _Palaeocercus cuvieri_ and _Falco_–the former possibly from England also; from the Lower Miocene of France _Teracus littoralis_, _Palaeohierax gervaisi_, _Aquila_, _Buteo_, and _Milvus_; from its Middle Miocene _Haliaëtus_ and _Aquila_. _Aquila_ also occurs in the American Pliocene of Nebraska and Oregon; _Falco_ in the Italian; from the drifts of Queensland we have _Necrastur alacer_ and _Taphaëtus branchialis_; from the Argentine Pampean of Lujan and the Post-Pampean of Monte Hermoso respectively _Asthenopterus minutus_ and _Foetopterus ambiguus_; while the superficial deposits and swamps of New Zealand furnish a sub-fossil _Circus_ and the giant _Harpagornis moorii_; and the Mare aux Songes of Mauritius _Astur alphonsi_. {182}CHAPTER V NEORNITHES CARINATAE _CONTINUED_ BRIGADE II–LEGION I (ALECTOROMORPHAE). ORDERS: TINAMIFORMES–GALLIFORMES– GRUIFORMES–CHARADRIIFORMES ORDER VIII. TINAMIFORMES.