444 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 



kill, except when nesting, and it is not until the districts 

 where it breeds are visited that one finds out how numerous 

 Sea-Eagles are, even at the present day. 



Keepers living on the Danube not far from Draueck have 

 told me that in July, when the fledgling eagles are making 

 their first excursion along the river, and are still very awk- 

 ward at hunting and fishing, they congregate in the auen 

 among the smaller arms of the Danube, so that when the 

 water subsides, after the yearly spring inundations, they may 

 catch the fish that are swimming about in the shallows. At 

 that time incredible numbers of old and young Sea-Eagles 

 are said to collect within a small area; and if the keepers 

 knew what to do with them, and did not grudge their am- 

 munition, they could, by hiding themselves on one of the 

 arms of the river, kill, in a single morning, ten or twelve of 

 these birds as they fly up and down the water. 



The young Sea-Eagle is not particularly shy, for it does 

 not yet know what danger is, and being clumsy and heavy 

 dislikes changing its position often, and so allows itself to be 

 closely approached ; but the old bird, that has already travelled 

 much and has, while ranging about the most varied districts 

 of Central Europe, often heard the shot sing past him, is one 

 of the wariest of creatures. Most of these old winter visitors 

 can only be killed by employing the Eagle-Owl, and some of 

 them even understand the owl and the decoy-hut, and scru- 

 pulously avoid both. I have seen Sea-Eagles sitting a few 

 hundred paces from a carcass and constantly looking at it, 

 but never allowing themselves to be deluded into coming 

 down to it. The easiest but most unsportsmanlike way of 

 getting hold of them is by poison, laying out poisoned rabbits, 

 for instance, by the banks of rivers. By this means Sea- 

 Eagles are destroyed every winter along the Danube between 

 Vienna and Pressburg. 



The change in the colour of its plumage which every Sea- 



