the oncoming enemy until it is too late 

 to fly, and they squat on open ground 

 where the eagle lias no trouble in grab- 

 bing its prey on the first attempt. 



Fourteen golden eagles were 

 killed between January 1 and 

 March 15, 1940, and 15 were taken 

 during a similar period in 191:1. 

 The eagles killed in 1940 were with- 

 out exception in good physical coii- 

 (litiou. Tlie crop and stomach 

 coutents of all 29 were examined at 

 the Wildlife Research Laboratory 

 of the Fish and Wildlife Service at 

 Denver, Colo. Eight of the crops 

 and gizzards were empty; 3 con- 

 tained only jackrabbits; 1, a cot- 

 tontail rabbit; 14, pheasants; and 

 o sliowed evidence of the eagles hav- 

 ing taken both a jackrabbit and a 

 ])heasant. In short, of the 21 

 golden eagles which contained food, 

 approximately 81 percent had eaten 

 pheasant. 



A somewhat similar situation 

 arose in the winter of 1947-48 on the 

 Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge 

 in South Dakota. A report from 

 that area stated that — 



tlH' |)heasants survived the winter 

 with little loss except predation by golden 

 eagles. The eagles appeared unusually 

 aggressive this season in attacking pheas- 

 ants, and refuge personnel witnessed four 

 birds seized by them in a single day. 



Besides showing the capabilities 

 of the golden eagle under peculiar 

 local conditions, the foregoing inci- 

 dents reveal one of the weaknesses 

 of generalizations as to wildlife 

 food habits when appraised solely 

 through stomach analysis unsup- 

 ported with associated evidence of 

 field conditions. Without such 

 knowledge, deductions based on 

 these crop and stomach contents 



would make it appear that the ring- 

 necked pheasant ranked second to 

 jackrabbits as a food item of the 

 golden eagle (see table 2). Over 

 the general range of the two birds 

 this would not be a true picture. 

 Inadequate data, no matter how sin- 

 cerely presented, can thus be as 

 great a perjurer of wildlife testi- 

 mony as can circumstantial evi- 

 dence in the hands of one attempt- 

 ing to "prove" a preconceived point. 



Sage Grouse. — More recently, 

 Batterson and Morse (1948) con- 

 tended that in an Oregon area 

 studied, the chief predator of sage 

 grouse during the strutting season 

 was the golden eagle. They tell of 

 the killing of two male grouse by 

 this eagle on a strutting area dur- 

 ing the 1942 season when the maxi- 

 mum number of males present 

 was 67. 



Scott (1942) observed golden 

 eagles disrupting sage-grouse strut- 

 ting and mating activities, but 

 stated that the time of day at which 

 mating occurs is probably a helpful 

 adaptation for protection against 

 the "most dreaded of all enemies, 

 the golden eagle.'' He noted that 

 golden eagles seldom flew over the 

 strutting grounds before sunrise 

 and that more than 50 percent of all 

 matings recorded occurred before 

 that time of clay. 



Wild Turhcy. — This study sheds 

 no new light on the relation of the 

 golden eagle to the wild turkey, 

 but the following previously un- 

 published testimony' is presented. 



W. C. Glazener, of the Texas 

 (rame and E'ish Commission, re- 

 ports : 



On January 11, 194.5, I flushed an im- 

 mature golden eagle from a live oak mott 



23 



