Figure 7. — Young bald eagles in their nest on offshore pinnacle, Rat Island, Aleutian 

 Islands, Alaska. (Photograph by V. B. Scheffer.) 



pair of eagles on the ground in 

 Crawford County, Mich. Here the 

 birds had constructed their nest on 

 a knoll in the burned-over plain of 

 a pine forest (Sharritt 1939). 



Although the laying of eggs by 

 one species of bird in the nest of 

 another occurs frequently, nesting 

 in the occupied nest of another spe- 

 cies is less common. Yet, such an 

 instance \vas reported by J. Warren 

 Jacobs (1908), when he found a 

 great horned owl incubating two of 

 its eggs in a cavit}' in the side of 

 the large nest of a bald eagle. The 

 eagle was also incubating a set of 

 its own eggs at the top of the great 

 nest pile. The diurnal fish-eating 

 habit of the eagles apparently did 



not conflict unduly with the noc- 

 turnal rodent feeding of the owls. 

 Dr. Herrick (1933) observed a pair 

 of English sparrows that had built 

 their nest in the side of a bald 

 eagle's domicile and availed them- 

 selves of the down shed by the 

 eaglets to line their nest. 



That bald eagles mate for life is 

 a common and apparently a well- 

 substantiated belief. If one of a 

 pair is killed, the other usually ac- 

 quires a new mate and may continue 

 to nest at tlie former site. Since 

 bald eagles apparently become sex- 

 ually mature even before they have 

 acquired adult plumage, it is pos- 

 sible to find a bird in juvenal plum- 

 ajre mated with one in full adult 



16 



