222 Birds Every Child Should Know 



sticks, sod, cornstalks, pine twigs, weeds, bones, 

 and other coarse rubbish, until, after annual 

 repairs for several seasons, the broad, fiat nest 

 may grow to be almost as high as it is wide and 

 look something like a New York sky-scraper. 

 Both parents sit on the eggs in turn and devote 

 themselves with zeal to feeding the eaglets. 

 These spoiled children remain in the nest 

 several months without attempting to fly, 

 expecting to be waited upon even after they are 

 actually larger than the old birds. The cast- 

 ings of skins, bones, hair, scales, etc., in the 

 vicinity of a hawk's or eagle's nest, will indicate, 

 almost as well as Dr. Fisher's analysis, what 

 food the babies had in their stomachs to make 

 them grow so big. Immature birds are almost 

 black all over. Not until they are three years 

 old do the feathers on their heads and necks 

 turn white, giving them the effect of being bald. 

 Any eagle seen in the eastern United States is 

 sure to be of this species. 



In the West and throughout Asia and Africa 

 lives the golden eagle, of which Tennyson wrote 

 the lines that apply equally well to our East- 

 em ''bird of freedom": 



"He clasps the crag with crooked hands; 

 Close to the sun in lonely lands, 

 Ringed with the azure world he stands. 

 The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls: 

 He watches from his mountain walls. 

 And, like a thunderbolt, he falls.*' 



