98 BRITISH BIRDS. 
duties that the bird wanders out of its favourite haunts and visits more 
pastoral scenes. Then it is sometimes seen sailing proudly over the Low- 
lands, and, more rarely still, gets as far south as England and Wales; 
although there is no room to doubt that by far the greater number of 
Eagles reported to have been seen in this country are nothing but the far 
commoner Sea-Eagle, Haliaetus albicilla. 
You may cage the proud king of birds, you may confine him in mena- 
geries, and observe him there; but to gain an insight into his nature you 
must see him in his haunts, where his eagle soul is unfettered, and where 
he can roam the mountain-tops at will. Far away from man’s busy haunts, 
on the brown heathery hills of the north, you must seek him, where nature 
and her wildest scenery is yet unchanged, and the wilderness is wrapt in 
an endless solitude. See him perched on yonder grey pinnacle of rock 
overhanging one of the ravines of the snow-capped Cullins, and watching 
the blue hares sport amongst the rocks—or see him soaring in boundless 
freedom over the peaks of Rum and Canna, or hastening across the clear 
blue waters of the Minch to his nest and mate in the hoary fastnesses of 
Glen Brittle—then you see the Eagle as he is at home, free as the tempest, 
and the monarch of the wilds. 
Most certainly the Golden Eagle, when he lives where game is scarce, is 
a pest—truly, indeed, “the pride and the pest of the parish,” aye, and of 
the whole country-side as well. The Golden Eagle has been known, on one 
Highland sheep-farm alone, in the course of a single season, to carry off 
as many as thirty-five lambs. Probably the amount is underestimated ; 
for on such immense tracts of country as the Highland sheep-farms 
it is impossible to tell how many lambs are really taken. It is in 
these districts, where game is scarce, that the Golden Hagle does so much 
harm; and it is scarcely to be expected that sheep-farmers will put up 
with the questionable pleasure of having the bird for a neighbour at such 
an expense of live stock. But in other districts the Golden Eagle 
is comparatively a harmless bird. In deer-forests Eagles are of the 
greatest service; for although they sometimes take a sickly deer-calf, they 
live almost entirely on the blue hares, so troublesome to the deer-stalker ; 
and most certainly the deer are the better for the removal of the weak and 
sickly ones, which would only possibly live to transmit their diseases to 
posterity. The Golden Eagle strikes his prey, if it be a lamb, behind the 
head, and, as a rule, carries it off at once—to the nest, if the bird be bur- 
dened with family cares, or to some wild secluded place where he can con- 
sume it in peace. But lambs are not the Golden Hagle’s only food. High 
up among the mountains, almost in a region of perpetual snow, the blue 
hare lives ; and this interesting little animal forms his favourite prey. This 
hare, like the Ptarmigan and the stoat, changes its summer dress for one 
of purest whiteness when the winter commences—this change doubtless 
