66 FALCONID.^. 



301. HARPYHALIAETU3 CORONATUS (Vieill.X 

 (CROWNED HARPY.) 



Harpyhaliaetus coronatus, Scl. et Salv. Nomencl. p. 119 ; Hudson, P. Z. S. 

 1872, p. 536 (Rio Negro) ; Sharpe, Cat. B. i. p. 221. 



Description. Above ashy brown, with a long occipital crest of darker feathers ; 

 wings grey with blackish tips ; tail black, with a broad white median band and 

 white tip : beneath paler ashy brown, thighs blackish : whole length 33 inches, 

 wing 22-0, tail 13'5. Female similar, but larger. 



Hab. South America. 



I met with this fine Eagle on the Rio Negro, in Patagonia, where 

 (TOrbigny also found it ; the entire Argentine Territory comes, how- 

 ever, within its range. Having merely seen it perched on the tall 

 willows fringing the Rio Negro, or soaring in wide circles far up in the 

 sky, I cannot venture to speak of its habits, while the account of them 

 which d'Orbigny built up is not worth quoting, for he does not say 

 how he got his information. One of his statements would, if true, be 

 very important indeed. He says that his attention was drawn to a very 

 curious fact concerning the Crowned Harpy, which was, that this bird 

 preys chiefly on the skunk an animal, he very truly adds, with so 

 pestilential an odour that even the most carnivorous of mammals are 

 put to flight by it ; that it is the only bird of prey that kills the skunk, 

 and that it does so by precipitating itself from a vast height upon its 

 quarry, which it then quickly despatches. It would not matter at all 

 whether the Eagle dropped from a great or a moderate height, for in 

 either case the skunk would receive its enemy with the usual pestilent 

 discharge. D'Orbigny's account is, however, pure conjecture, and 

 though he does not tell us what led him to form such a conclusion, I 

 have no doubt that it was because the Eagle or Eagles he obtained had 

 the skunk-smell on their plumage. Most of the Eagles I shot in 

 Patagonia, including about a dozen Chilian Eagles, smelt of skunk, the 

 smell being in most cases old and faint. Of two Crowned Harpies 

 obtained, only one smelt of skunk. This only shows that in Patagonia 

 Eagles attack the skunk, which is not strange, considering that it is of 

 a suitable size and conspicuously marked; that it goes about fearlessly 

 in the daytime and is the most abundant animal, the small cavy excepted, 

 in that sterile country. But whether the Eagles succeed in their attacks 

 on it is a very different matter. The probability is that when an Eagle, 

 incited by the pangs of hunger, commits so great a mistake as to attack 

 a skunk, the pestilent fluid, which has the same terribly burning and 

 nauseating effects on the lower animals as on man, very quickly makes 



