l62 Cameron, Nesting of the Golden Eagle. Yk™ 



Whether the male or female happened to be frightened from the 

 eyrie by me neither would return if I chanced to be near, and 

 before realizing this fact I wasted hours waiting to see the bird 

 come back, unconscious that the eagle watched for my departure 

 from some lofty pinnacle. At length, however, by searching the 

 badland peaks with my binoculars I discovered the watching bird 

 and the principles of its game. 



On the other hand, the parent that happened to be absent on 

 commissariat duty, when I visited the nest, had no scruples about 

 returning to shade the eaglets, and I have known the male to do 

 this before I had ridden 200 yards away, the bird sweeping past 

 to the eyrie with a great rush of wings. When both parents were 

 frightened away I never waited long at the eyrie, believing that 

 the hot sun might kill the eaglets. In keen distress they pressed 

 into the angles of the rock laboriously panting, the water dropping 

 from their mouths, while swarms of flies, attracted by the raw 

 meat odor they exhaled, completed their torment. This deter- 

 mination never to face the sun added to the difficulties of the 

 photographer. (Plate V.) 



At first the call of the young for the parents was a piping or 

 whistling on two notes, more like a plover than an eagle, but 

 when they were nearly two months old it became harsh, resembling 

 that of the American Sparrow Hawk. The old birds afforded 

 shade to their young with drooping wings, keeping the breast 

 or tail over them indifferently ; but while thus engaged, they had 

 no shade themselves, and they, too, panted with gaping beak which 

 was not becoming to their style of beauty. At a month and eight- 

 een days old, when the male eaglet was still a crouching spiritless 

 object, the female stood boldly in the eyrie and looked something 

 like an adult eagle, as the photograph shows. (Plate VI.) In 

 plumage, as in everything else, she was far in advance of the 

 male, and at two months old (July 8) left the rock to take short 

 flights in the badlands attended by her admiring parents. When 

 tired she perched in a low cedar, at the edge of a ravine, the old 

 birds sitting on the ground beside her. They had now become 

 so accustomed to seeing me as to pay but little attention to my 

 presence. Meanwhile the male eaglet would not leave the rock 

 and did not fly for a week later although hatched at the same time ! 



