24 LAKES AND RIVERS. 



CHAPTER II. 



AQUATIC BIRDS. RAPACES, DIPPER, KINGFISHER, TITS, 

 AND WAGTAILS. 



THE Sea Eagle (Aquila albicilla), although usually 

 a bird frequenting the cliffs of a few localities in 

 remote parts of our sea-coasts, yet is known to 

 haunt the vicinity of inland lakes and rivers. Mr. 

 Thompson mentions it as frequenting the lakes of 

 Killarney, and it used to breed on the Mourne 

 mountains. Mr. Hewitson, quoting Mr. Wolley, 

 says : " The Sea Eagle generally makes its nest in 

 the high cliffs of the coast, where it lives upon fish, 

 guillemots, young herring, gulls, &c., but is also 

 occasionally found breeding inland. In the former 

 situation an eyrie which I visited two years in succes- 

 sion, and from which I took the egg which Mr. 

 Hewitson figures, had nothing, but a very little hea- 

 ther, grass, and moss used in its construction. Two 

 other nests which were carefully described to me were 

 made principally of sea-weed, and were in such ' tre- 

 mendous cliffs ' that my informant's ' hair gets 

 strong ' when he thinks of them. In the Shetlands 

 an inaccessible eyrie was pointed out to me on the 

 extreme top of a stack, that is, a steep, detached rock \ 

 and I have seen another such stack on the North- 

 east coast of Scotland, which was also said to have an 

 eyrie at its summit. In inland situations the Sea 

 Eagle is rare when compared with the Mountain Eagle 

 (as the Golden Eagle is usually called), and it generally 



