302 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



may weaken and die from exposure. The larger one, usually the 

 female, often attacks and may kill her little brother. Seton Gordon 

 (1927) twice witnessed spirited fights, of one of which he writes: 



Twenty minutes after the parent had left the family, Cain commenced a 

 very determined and entirely unprovoked attack upon her brother. She tore 

 from his unfortunate person great billfuls of white down and even tiny feathers. 

 Abel in desperation ran to the far side of the eyrie and lay there, quite still and 

 very sullen. Cain thereupon stood up, flapped her downy wings, and uttered 

 several wild and piercing yells of victory. There was an extraordinary and quite 

 unearthly quality in these calls which deeply impressed itself upon my mind. 

 Great billfuls of her brother's down adhered to her bill, and she had much 

 trouble in ridding herself of the fruits of her easily gained victory. 



Mr. Cameron (1905) says of the food of the young in Montana that 

 "the nest always contained either sharp-tailed grouse, jack-rabbits, 

 cotton-tails, mountain rats, meadowlarks or snakes", but no carrion. 

 He says that the eagles catch a number of rattlesnakes. "According 

 to eye-witnesses they feint several times at the snake to make it uncoil 

 and seize it just behind the head with one foot, while gripping it 

 further back with the other. The snake is then taken to a tree or 

 rock and the head torn off, which according to one observer is imme- 

 diately devoured, before the body is deposited in the eyrie." 



Mr. Sumner, in California, found numerous ground squirrels and 

 the remains of a cottontail, a crow, a meadowlark, and a gopher snake 

 in the nest. 



Young eagles remain in the vicinity of their nest for a long time 

 after they leave it. They are probably at least three months old be- 

 fore they gain the full power of flight. They are partially fed by 

 their parents at first and are watched and guarded by them until they 

 learn to hunt for themselves, probably until early in fall. Dr. Loye 

 Miller (1918) published the following account, as given to him by 

 one of his students : 



Last summer while my father and I were extracting honey at the apiary about 

 a mile southeast of Tliacher School, Ojai, California, we noticed a golden eagle 

 teaching its young one to fly. It was about ten o'clock. The mother started 

 from the nest in the crags, and roughly handling the young one, she allowed 

 him to drop, I should say, about ninety feet, then she would swoop down under 

 him, wings spread, and he would alight on her back. She would soar to the 

 top of the range with him and repeat the process. One time she waited perhaps 

 fifteen minutes between flights. I should say the farthest she let him fall was 

 150 feet. 



My father and I watched this, spellbound, for over an hour. I do not know 

 whether the young one gained confidence by this method or not. A few days 

 later father and I rode to the Cliff and out on Overhanging Rock. The eagle's 

 nest was empty. (Miss F. E. Shuman.) 



Plumages. — During the nest life of the eaglet the plumages may be 

 roughly divided into three stages — four weeks in a pure downy stage, 

 four weeks during which the plumage is growing, and three weeks in 



