44 HILL BIRDS OF SCOTLAND 



they average Si by 2| inches. It is said that, when three 

 eggs are found in an eyrie, one is always unfertile. 



In these islands the nesting site of the Sea Eagle has 

 usually been a lofty precipice along the sea coast. At 

 times the situation chosen was an inland one, however, 

 and in an eyrie sixty miles from the coast a fresh mackerel 

 was found. Like its relative, the Golden Eagle, the white- 

 tailed species has often two eyries placed a short distance 

 from each other, and these it uses not quite alternately, 

 but as occasion may demand. The eyrie is a bulky struc- 

 ture, from 6 feet to 8 feet in diameter, and often reaches 

 a great age before it is brought to the ground by a heavy 

 snowfall or a gale of exceptional severity. 



Though in the British Isles the Sea Eagle has not been 

 found — at all events within recent times — nesting in trees, 

 it not infrequently chooses such a situation in Germany, 

 where its eyrie has been seen on the Scots fir, oak, and 

 beech. Curiously enough, a Grey Crow's nest has been 

 taken in the same tree as that containing a Sea Eagle's 

 eyrie. Even where lofty cliffs abound the Sea Eagle does 

 not always make use of them. Thus in Shetland, where 

 inaccessible nesting sites are plentiful, an eyrie has actually 

 been found on the ground. 



When hatched out, the young of the White-tailed 

 Eagle are clad in down of a considerably darker colour 

 than the fledgelings of the Golden Eagle. The parent 

 birds, immediately after the hatching of the eaglets, sit 

 more closely than at any other time. When flushed 

 from her eyrie, the mother Sea Eagle usually sails off in 

 silence, but at times give utterance to sharp yelping cries 

 which are, if anything, more penetrating than those of 

 the Golden Eagle. 



From the day they first see the light, the eaglets are 

 supplied with a most liberal allowance of food. In an 

 eyrie containing two young birds about a week old were 



