tected; a few specimens of the 

 crested auklet {Aethia crlstatella) ^ 

 the horned puffin {Fratercula cor- 

 niculata) , and the pigeon guillemot 

 (Cepphus columha) also were iden- 

 tified. Two gulls, the glaucous- 

 winged {Larus glaucescens) and 

 the mew {L. caniis) , with which the 

 eagle often feeds, likewise were vic- 

 tims, and, on the basis of somewhat 

 doubtful identification, the remains 

 of a heron, a tern, crow or raven, 

 and sandpiper havei been added to 

 the list. Finding the reuuiins of a 

 young eaglet in one stomach indi- 

 cated that cannibalism may at times 

 occur in the eagle household. 

 Feathers and other fragments of 

 a domestic fowl found in the stom- 

 ach of an eagle collected at a fox 

 farm may have been carrion in 

 origin. 



Many of the birds captured were 

 taken under conditions of adversity 

 for either the eagle or the victim. 

 Severe weather with frozen lakes or 

 deep snow always adds to the likeli- 

 hood of unusual prey being cap- 

 tured. Also in areas of abundance, 

 as in the case of dense flocks of coots 

 or of herons and ducks in Florida 

 waters, ease of capture determines 

 the issue. 



The senior author observed a bald 

 eagle feeding on a freshly killed 

 loon in Pybus Bay, Southeastern 

 Alaska, on May 10, 1941, and later 

 in the same year the remains of a 

 bird apparently a mew, were found 

 in an eagle's nest nearby. At an- 

 other time the feathers of a recently 

 killed scoter were picked up at a 

 point where a bald eagle had been 

 seen feeding. 



The alertness of the bald eagle 

 in detecting the disability of avian 

 prey is exemplified by the experi- 

 ence of Alfred M. Bailey (1927), 

 who shot at and crippled a duck at 

 the mouth of the Stikine River in 

 Southeastern Alaska. The bird 

 glided down to the offshore ice, 

 where it was promptly picked up by 

 a passing bald eagle which flew 

 shoreward. The collector again 

 fired, this time at the eagle, and 

 missed completely, but the shot so 

 startled the big bird that it dropped 

 its prey on the beach where the duck 

 was retrieved. 



Probably nowhere in its range 

 does the bald eagle subsist on birds 

 to the extent it does in the Aleutian 

 Islands. Much of the information 

 on which this conclusion is based 

 comes from the field studies and 

 material collected by Olaus J. 

 Murie and his associates in 1936 and 

 1937. Since its food includes items 

 other than birds, the reader is re- 

 ferred to table 3, where he will find 

 a list of the avian victims of eagle 

 predation. 



Murie (1940) separated the data 

 for the 2 years of collecting in the 

 Aleutians and found that an appre- 

 ciably higher percentage of bird re- 

 mains was recorded in 1937 than in 



1936. For this he gives a logical ex- 

 planation that — 



It is likely that the material obtained in 



1937, consisting of 325 items [as against 

 121 for 1936], is somewhat more repre- 

 sentative of the Bald Eagle's diet in the 

 Aleutian Islands as a whole. 



To simplify matters and to include 

 all available information, the data 

 for the 2 years have been combined 

 in table 3. 



33 



