80 GOLDEN-EAGLE AND WHITETAILED-EAGLE 



size of 100 Scotch eggs, 3'02 x 2-33 in. [76'7 x 59'4 mm.]. Incubation is performed 

 by the hen alone. Probably the most accurate statement of the length of the 

 incubation period is that of Mr. E. S. Cameron, who watched two nests in Montana 

 and records the time as 35 and 33 days respectively. (Country Life, May 22, 1910.) 

 In Scotland the eggs are laid in the last days of March or early in April, occa- 

 sionally as early as mid-March, and in the South of Europe in the latter part 

 of March, but considerably later in the North of Europe. Only one brood is 

 reared in the season, and unlike nearly all other British birds, the Golden Eagle 

 appears not to lay again if the eggs are taken, at any rate in Scotland, though in 

 California several instances of second layings have been recorded. [F. c. E. J.] 



5. Food. Grouse, ptarmigan, hares, rabbits, and occasional small mammals, 

 and small birds and sickly lambs. The young are fed on the livers of rabbits 

 and hares, and the flesh of birds, by the female, [w. p. p.] 



WHITETAILED-EAGLE [Halidetus albicilla (Linnaeus). Sea-eagle, 

 erne. French, aigle a queue blanche ; German, Seeadler ; Italian, aquila 

 di mare]. 



I. Description. The whitetailed-eagle can always be distinguished from 

 the golden-eagle with which it is often confused by the fact that the tarso- 

 metatarsus is scale-covered, and not feathered, while in the adult the tail is more 

 or less completely white. The sexes are alike, but the female is slightly larger. 

 Male length 33-5 in. [838-0 mm.], female length 38 in. [965-0 mm.]. The upper 

 parts are brown, save the head and neck, which incline towards ashy grey, and in 

 very old birds towards white. The tail is pure white. The under parts are of a 

 chocolate-brown. The beak, cere, and feet are yellow ; and the iris is straw- 

 yellow. Immature birds are darker than the adults, obscure dark brown blotches 

 on the tips of the feathers of the mantle and median wing-coverts imparting a 

 mottled appearance. The tail feathers are of a whitish brown mottled with 

 darker brown. The under parts are of a dark brown and more or less conspicuously 

 mottled as on the back. The beak is black, the cere and legs yellow, and the iris 

 is dark brown. Young in down reddish brown, [w. P. P.] 



2. Distribution. As a British breeding species the sea-eagle is now 

 extinct in Ireland, where till recently a pair bred in the N. Mayo cliffs, but one or 

 two pairs maintain a precarious existence in the Outer Hebrides and Shetlands. 

 Outside the British Isles it is a common resident in Greenland, and a few pairs 



