38 HILL BIRDS OF SCOTLAND 



cern, for on that peninsula there are no birds such as the 

 eagles prey on in these islands. Either, I imagine, the 

 eagles must feed largely on sea-birds or else subsist upon 

 the smaller land songsters, of which there are many in 

 the district. It seemed to me that the Crimean eagles 

 were larger and not quite so graceful in their soaring as 

 our own native birds ; but I had not sufficient time to 

 study them as fully as I should have liked. In Eastern 

 Turkestan, where it lives on the stag, the antelope, the 

 wolf, and the fox, the eagle is trained for falconry, and 

 such a trained bird was valued at the price of two camels. 



In this country the Golden Eagle has no wide migra- 

 tion, though it often moves over to grouse moors during 

 severe weather. Scarcely a winter passes without the 

 report of the capture of a Golden Eagle along our east 

 or south-east coasts, but such birds are, in nine cases 

 out of ten, immature Sea Eagles. A friend of mine 

 told me he once saw in the New Forest a bird which 

 seemed to him to be a Golden Eagle — and he has had 

 much experience of the eagle in Scotland. There was 

 a whole gale of wind blowing at the time, and the eagle 

 was only a short distance from the ground. A Golden 

 Eagle was obtained in Lincolnshire on November 1, 

 1881, and again on October 29, 1895, but there are few 

 authenticated cases of its appearance south of the Tweed 

 during the last half-century. Eagles vary so much in 

 size that accurate measurements are difficult. 



As is the case with most birds of prey, the female 

 is the larger and more powerfully built of the two, and 

 a specimen is recorded from Northumberland which 

 measured no less than 11 feet 3 inches from wing tip 

 to wing tip. This is quite out of the ordinary for a 

 British eagle, but recently, when in the forest of Gaick, 

 I saw an eagle which was noticeable as having, even at 

 the height at which it was soaring, a spread of wing of 



