"Yes, my boy, everything that Heart of Nature guides had a beginning and was once young."
"What is that? An Eagle?" cried Dodo suddenly, pointing up to a very large bird, with a white breast and brown-barred tail, who flew over the bay and dived into the water.
"It's the Fisherman Bird," said Olaf. "Some call it the Fish Hawk and others the Osprey. They say it lives all over North America, but it goes far south in winter, and when it conies back in spring we know the fish are running again; for it lives on the fish it catches, and won't come until they are plenty."
"How does it catch fish?" asked Dodo.
"It hovers overhead until it sees, with its sharp eye, a fish ripple the water; then it pounces down like a flash, and grabs the fish with, its long claws, that are made like grappling-irons. If the fish is small the Osprey carries it home easily; but if it is a big one there may be a fight. Sometimes, if the Osprey's claws get caught in a fish too large to fly away with, the Fisherman Bird is dragged under water and drowned."
"Do they still nest on Round Island?" asked the Doctor. "There were a dozen pairs of them there when I was a boy."
"Yes, sir! But there is only one pair now. It's a great rack of sticks, half as big as a haystack; for they mend it every season, and so it keeps growing until now it is almost ready to fall out of the old tree that holds it. And, do you know, sir, that Purple Grackles have stuck their own nests into the sides of it, until it is as full of birds as a great summer hotel is of people."
"Oh, we must see it!" said Olive, who had finished putting her seaweeds to press; "for as yet I have only read about such a nest."