ACCIPITKES. ( 307 ) FALCONIDyE. 



THE SEA EAGLE. 



WHITE-TAILED EAGLE, GREY EAGLE, CINEROUS EAGLE, ERNE.l 



Haliceetus alhicilla. 



Like to an Eagle in his kingly p}-ide, 

 Soaring through his -wide empire of the aire 

 To weather his brode sails. 



Spenser, Faerie Queen. 



The Sea Eagle, which is the largest of our rapacious birds, 

 seldom visits the county. 



Selby, in his Eeport on the Ornithology of Berwickshire, 

 says: — "Several instances of the Great Sea Eagle have 

 occurred within our precincts. All the examples of this 

 kind that I have seen and examined have been in immature 

 plumage ; a circumstance, however, not at all remarkable, as 

 the adults, when once paired, rarely leave the immediate 

 vicinity of the eyry they have selected, and the young, 

 after quitting the nest, are always driven from the district 

 in which they have been bred by the parent birds."" 



The poet Thomson refers to this characteristic habit of 

 the Eagle in the following beautiful lines : — 



High from tlie summit of a craggy cliff. 

 Hung o'er the deep ; such as amazing frowns 

 On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race 

 Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds. 

 The Royal Eagle draws his vigorous young, 



1 Em, Erne, Eirne, Earn : — the Eagle. Anglo-Saxon, Earn. — Jamieson's 

 Scot. Diet. 



2 Report on the Ornithology of Berwickshire, and the district within the 

 limits of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Cluh. — Hist. Ber. Nat. Club, vol. i. 

 p. 250. 



