42 SEAEAGLE. 



is simple, it indulges freely, uses great exercise, breathes the purest air, 

 is healthy, vigorous and long-lived. The lords of the creation themselves 

 might derive some useful hints from these facts, were they not already, 

 in general, too wise, or too proud, to learn from their inferiors^ the fowls 

 of the air and beasts of the field. 



FALCO OSSIFRAGVS* 



SEA EAGLE. 



[Plate LV. Fig. 2.] 

 Sea Eagle, Arct. Zool. p. 194, No. 86, A. 



This eagle inhabits the same countries, frequents the 'same situations, 

 and lives on the same kind of food, as the Bald Eagle, with whom it is 

 often seen in company. It resembles this last so much in figure, size, 

 form of the bill, legs and claws, and is so often seen associating with it, 

 both along the Atlantic coast, and in the vicinity of our lakes and large 

 rivers, that I have strong suspicions, notwithstanding ancient and very 

 respectable authorities to the contrary, of its being the same species, 

 only in a difi"erent stage of color. 



That several years elapse before the young of the Bald Eagle receive 

 the white head, neck and tail ; and that during the intermediate period 

 their plumage strongly resembles that of the Sea Eagle, I am satisfied 

 from my own observation on three several birds kept by persons of this 

 city. One of these belonging to the late Mr. Enslen, collector of natu- 

 ral subjects for the Emperor of Austria, was confidently believed by him 

 to be the Black, or Sea Eagle, until the fourth year, when the plumage 

 on the head, tail and tail-coverts, began gradually to become white ; the 

 bill also exchanged its dusky hue for that of yellow ; and before its 

 death, this bird, which I frequently examined, assumed the perfect dress 

 of the full-plumaged Bald Eagle. Another circumstance corroborating 

 these suspicions, is the variety that occurs in the colors of the Sea Eagle. 

 Scarcely two of these are found to be alike, their plumage being more 

 or less diluted with white. In some, the chin, breast and tail-coverts, 

 are of a deep brown ; in others nearly white ; and in all evidently un- 

 fixed, and varying to a pure white. Their place and manner of build- 

 ing, on high trees, in the neighborhood of lakes, large rivers, or the 

 ocean, exactly similar to the Bald Eagle, also strengthens the belief. 

 At the celebrated cataract of Niagara, great numbers of these birds, 



* This is not a distinct species, but the young of the preceding, the Falco leuco- 

 cephalus. 



