42 HILL BIRDS OF SCOTLAND 



wife, whereupon the second and foster-mother, showing 

 a commendable interest in the eaglets, took her de- 

 parture and soon reappeared with another male to assist 

 her in her self-imposed task of rearing the family. Her 

 devotion did no more than to cause her own destruction, 

 and the imported male took his departure, abandoning 

 the eyrie and its contents. 



There was, it must be admitted, a strong incentive to 

 shoot the eagles quite apart from the damage they caused, 

 for a reward of ten shillings was formerly paid in Skye for 

 each Erne accounted for, and on one occasion no less than 

 three eagles were shot in the course of a single morning 

 whilst gorging on a dead sheep. Is it to be wondered at, 

 then, that the Sea Eagle, formerly so numerous, had 

 ceased to breed on the Isle of Skye by the year 1890 ? 

 In Orkney, too, the eagle was treated as an outcast of the 

 most dangerous type. Here there is, or was, an old 

 custom that anyone killing a White-tailed Eagle should 

 be entitled to a hen from every house situated in the 

 parish in which the bird was killed, while so long ago as 1800 

 the Commissioners of Supply paid out five shillings for every 

 eagle destroyed. Doubtless, as a result of such incessant 

 and organised persecution, the Sea Eagle ceased to nest 

 in Orkney about the year 1880. About this time, too, it 

 disappeared from Cape Wrath, though on the sea cliffs 

 of Ireland it was said to be not uncommon in 1883, and 

 nested in Mayo till recently. In earlier times the Bass 

 Rock, that well-known landmark from North Berwick, 

 had its pair of Sea Eagles. In 1835 it still nested in the 

 Lake District, and other strongholds were the Isle of 

 Man, the Isle of Wight, and Lundy Island. 



In disposition it is much more roving than the Golden 

 Eagle, and scarcely a season passes without some immature 

 specimen, on its migration south, being shot by a sports- 

 man and reported in the local press as a Golden Eagle. 



