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Updated: June 4, 2025
A fish-hawk will make its nest upon the ground, or a hummock, a stump, a buoy, a chimney upon anything near the water that offers an adequate platform; but its choice is the dead top of some lofty tree where the pathway for its wide wings is open and the vision range is free for miles around. How dare the bird rear such a pile upon so slight and towering a support!
If one of them enters an inviting pool after fish, he soon finds a fence thrown round it, and a spring trap set in the only path out of the enclosure. Their flesh is eaten, and relished. The banks, on which the female lays her eggs by night, are carefully searched by day, and all the eggs dug out and devoured. The fish-hawk makes havoc among the few young ones that escape their other enemies.
The lake was now swarming with wild-fowl of various kinds: crowds of ducks were winging their way across it from morning till night, floating in vast flocks upon its surface, or rising in noisy groups if an eagle or fish-hawk appeared sailing with slow, majestic circles above them, then settling down with noisy splash upon the calm water.
The water below was slaty gray, in response to the gray sky above: there seemed no life in either. The hearts of the girls sank within them, and all at once they felt tired. In the air was just one sign of life: high above the lake wheeled a large fish-hawk. "Look!" said Alister pointing; "there is the osprey that lives here with his wife! He is just going to catch a fish!"
A fish-hawk, which, secure on the topmost branches of a dead pine, had been a distant spectator of the fray, now stooped from his high and ragged perch, and soared, in wide sweeps, above his prey; while a jay, whose noisy voice had been stilled by the hoarser cries of the savages, ventured again to open his discordant throat, as though once more in undisturbed possession of his wild domains.
There were blue-jays all about us, making the woods ring with their querulous cries, and a single fish-hawk screamed from the blue overhead, as he sailed round and round, watching the chances of a supper in the lake.
"Here he is again! here's Old Whitehead, robbing the fish-hawk." I started up from the little commoosie beyond the fire, at Gillie's excited cry, and ran to join him on the shore. A glance out over Caribou Point to the big bay, where innumerable whitefish were shoaling, showed me another chapter in a long but always interesting story.
Jim sat in the stern of his little boat, guiding and propelling it with his paddle. Flocks of ducks rose before him, and swashed down with a fluttering ricochet into the water again, beyond the shot of his rifle. A fish-hawk, perched above his last year's nest, sat on a dead limb and watched him as he glided by. A blue heron rose among the reeds, looked at him quietly, and then hid behind a tree.
While they complained, a fish-hawk flew up from the river with flapping wings, and let fall a great pike in the midst of the camp. There was food enough and to spare. Never have I seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." "But the fierce pagans of the forest," cried the abbess, "they may pierce the boy with their arrows, or dash out his brains with their axes.
The fish-hawk, too, is occasionally seen at this season sailing majestically over the water, and he who has once observed it will not soon forget the majesty of its flight.
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