348 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The commonest and most characteristic utterance of the Bald Eagle is singu- 

 larly out of keeping with the bird's imposing size and not undignified bearing. 

 Weak in volume and trivial in expression it consists of seven or eight notes 

 given rather quickly, but haltingly and with apparent difficulty, as if their 

 author were choking or gasping for breath. It cannot fitly be called a scream, 

 but is rather a snickering laugh expressive of imbecile derision, rather than 

 anything else. My notes render it thus — Ei-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ker. I am not sure 

 that this outcry is ever made by Eagles less than a year old. Younger ones 

 frequently utter a shrill, querulous squealing pec, pee-e, pec-v liaving a rising 

 inflection and suggestive of hunger unappeased and insatiable. 



Dr. Herrick (1933) writes: 



Notwithstanding the many days and weeks spent with these eagles I have 

 only once or twice seen them to good advantage when making their famous ear- 

 splitting screams. This once happened when I was taking motion pictures of 

 the female on her tree-perch, one hundred feet away, and the scream was occa- 

 sioned, I think, by a distant glimpse which she got of her mate, who was at that 

 time recreant to his domestic duties. Bending down somewhat, the head is 

 gradually elevated until at the climax of the scream it is directed to the zenith 

 and nearly or quite touches the back. 



Economic status.— Throughout most of its range in central and 

 eastern North America the northern bald eagle is too thinly distrib- 

 uted to be of any great importance economically. It destroys many 

 fish, but mainly those of the least food value ; by far the greater part 

 of these are dead fish, which would only pollute the waters. Domestic 

 poultry is seldom disturbed ; Dr. Herrick counted only 13 chickens in 

 two years of study. The number of game birds and other small birds 

 destroyed is insignificant. Most of the small mammals on which it 

 feeds are more or less injurious. But on the coasts of British Colum- 

 bia and Alaska, where eagles are enormously abundant, the case is 

 very different. Vast numbers of eagles have been killed under the 

 bounty system, which has caused much concern among bird protec- 

 tionists and much controversy over the justification for such slaughter. 

 The salmon fisheries claim that the eagles injure their business seri- 

 ously by devouring enormous numbers of salmon, but they forget that 

 eagles are too lazy to catch live fish when they can pick up dead ones 

 and that probably the bulk of their food consists of dead and dying 

 salmon and herring that have finished spawning. Here too consider- 

 able damage is done to wildfowl, ducks and geese, and other game 

 birds. Eagles undoubtedly kill some lambs of mountain sheep, kids 

 of mountain goats, and young fawns, but there is little, if any, evi- 

 dence that this damage is extensive, especially as eagles are scarce in 

 the interior. Where eagles are sufficiently abundant and are known 

 to be doing serious damage to salmon fisheries, fur-farming activities, 

 or other human interests they should be reduced in numbers. There 

 is no danger of their extermination in the vast uninhabited regions of 

 Alaska. Elsewhere we can afford to protect such a picturesque fea- 

 ture as our national emblem. 



