WHITE-TAILED EAGLE 



393 



legs chrome-yellow. Young birds are sharply distinguished by the 

 brown tail, as well as by the darker tone of the plumage, which is 

 mottled on the back and wings with tawny ; the black beak, and the 

 brown cere and eyes, the legs being yellow, as in adults. 



The geographical range of this splendid bird extends from Green- 

 land in the west right across Europe and northern Asia to Kamchatka, 

 and in the opposite direction from northern Scandinavia to Greece and 

 Egypt ; all these countries, as well as Japan, being included in the 

 breeding- area. Nevertheless, the 

 species is to a certain extent 

 migratory, making its appearance 

 in north-western India, and per- 

 haps also in southern China, only 

 during the cold season. 



Eggs in the collection of the 

 British Museum from Donegal, 

 Glencoe, and the Shetlands and 

 Orkneys indicate that the white- 

 tailed eagle at one time bred in 

 the localities named, while other 

 evidence proves it to have nested 

 in Westmoreland, the Isle of Man, 

 Lundy Island, and possibly some 

 other places in England. To-day 

 its sole remaining breeding-locali- 

 ties appear to be Shetland, a few 

 places in the north and west of 

 Scotland, and one or two localities 

 in Ireland. From several of its 

 old Scottish breeding-places, such 

 as the islands of Rum (where no 

 less than eight were killed in 1866) 



and Mull, it seems to have disappeared as a breeding bird in the 

 'seventies ; and in Ireland it is now more rare than the golden eagle. 

 To Great Britain elsewhere than the localities mentioned above the 

 white-tailed eagle is chiefly a more or less occasional autumn and 

 winter visitor, although a considerable number of immature birds make 

 their appearance on the south and east coasts of England, where they 

 are almost invariably regarded as golden eagles. 



Although, perhaps, more frequently met with on the coast than 

 elsewhere, this bird makes itself equally at home in the neighbourhood 



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