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THE EAGLE IN ENGLAND 



IN November 1891 a spotted eagle was caught at 

 Elmstead near Colchester. It appears to have alighted 

 exhausted in a field, and to have been there chased and 

 caught, after weak efforts to fly, by a labourer, who 

 sold it to a gipsy, from whom it was bought by a 

 benevolent bird-stuffer ; and as it is reported to have 

 eaten in three days a rabbit, a large fowl, and many 

 pounds of mutton, it may be taken that its health was 

 perfectly restored, after its involuntary flight across the 

 German Ocean. For the spotted eagle is amongst the 

 rarest stragglers to England, and the bird should by 

 this time be far on its journey to the south, or making 

 its way with others of its kind up the Nile Valley, 

 towards the mountains of Abyssinia. But though the 

 spotted eagle is so rare a visitor to this country, eagles 

 are less uncommon in England than might be supposed, 

 and hardly a season passes in which they are not seen, 

 even in the south. Two are said to have been seen 

 flying over Westminster during the frost of February 

 1895 > an d though this report is not corroborated, it is 

 certain that during the past few years, sea-eagles have 



