Vol^-gXXVj Cameron, The Golden Eagle in Montana. 263 



has been seen to carry a kid antelope in Montana, but he did not 

 witness the occurrence himself. 



I willingly admit that an eagle of exceptional size, or when 

 stimulated by stress of circumstance to exceptional effort, may 

 lift an exceptional weight. INIr. Harting, for instance, relates a 

 story of an eagle which, while devouring a hare was attacked by a 

 fox, and which in its effort to escape from the bull-dog grip of its 

 antagonist lifted the fox to "a considerable height in the air." 

 The witness of this struggle is not recorded by name, but Mr. 

 Harting says that Robert Gray took pains to verify the story.^ 

 As given in the Ivondon 'Field' for Jan. 11, 1908, the weight of a 

 full-grown dog fox is from 16 to 20 lbs. In this case the eagle 

 possessed a great advantage in having its legs free; there must 

 also have been a wind at the time which enabled the bird to get 

 under way when the fox seized it. Furthermore, we do not know 

 the Aveight of this particular fox. An eagle always has some 

 difficulty in rising from the ground unless from the top of an emi- 

 nence with a high wind blowing; and all my observations on 

 Montana eagles confirm the view that an average specimen cannot 

 rise from the level with any weight exceeding 4 or at most 5 lbs. 

 in its talons. A heavy bird like an eagle must have the use of its 

 legs to spring from the earth, and if these are tied, or hampered 

 to any considerable extent, the bird is then unable to rise but flaps 

 along the surface of the ground. In the case of the Golden Eagle, 

 I have amply demonstrated this to my owm satisfaction by experi- 

 ments made with an adult bird caught by one claw in a wolf trap. 

 The eagles which I actually watched carrying prairie dogs to their 

 nestlings held the prey in one foot. On March 21, 1905, my wife 

 and I, when out riding, saw the female eagle of our nesting pair 

 occupied with something at the head of a draw. We rode towards 

 her, and although the eagle could see us coming, she did not take 

 alarm imtil we were about a gunshot off. Then crouching down 

 she leapt upwards from the ground, and simultaneously spreading 

 her wings flapped down the draw. As the day was calm she 

 continued this flapping until high in air, when she obtained enough 

 wind to sail and circled on motionless wings. We found that she 



1 Recreations of a Naturalist, by J. E. Harting, p. 336. 



