A GOLDEN EAGLE. 27 



sleet and snow. Having slept long, I was late in arriving 

 at the nest, and, as I had expected, found both parents 

 absent and the young Eagle asleep. The wind was 

 blowing from the north and the cold was intense. The 

 Eaglet spent most of the morning in his snug quarters 

 under the rock, but a brief glimpse of sunshine at noon 

 awoke him from his slumbers. He was now beginning 

 to use his legs, and his clumsy efforts to walk were exceed- 

 ingly amusing. For perhaps a second or two he would 

 stand upright, but the weight of his body generally 

 overbalanced him when he tried to make a step, and he 

 fell ignominiously forward. His determination to walk, 

 however, was very marked, and in the course of an hour 

 or so his perseverance was rewarded with some measure 

 of success. 



At 2.5 p.m. his mother brought him a grouse, and 

 seemed surprised to find him standing more or less 

 upright. She gave him a few titbits from the liver and, 

 as usual, devoured the entrails herself, but she had 

 evidently no intention of giving him a square meal at 

 this early hour. At 4.30 she came back and gave him 

 his supper, still encouraging him to pick out the titbits 

 for himself, and while she was thus engaged the cock 

 settled on a stone close to the nest, but too near my 

 " bothy " for a satisfactory picture. He then flapped 

 on to the top of my hiding-place and sat there for some 

 minutes close to my head, showing by this action how 

 completely the suspicions of the Eagles had been over- 

 come. Both birds then took their departure, the female 

 bearing away with her the remains of the carcase of the 

 grouse. 



The next day was comparatively uneventful, the most 

 noticeable feature being the extraordinary progress which 

 the Eaglet had made in his walking lessons, but from the 

 point of view of photography the day was unsatisfactory, 

 because somehow or other the Eagles had become 

 suspicious of my hiding-place. Possibly the female had 



