82 WILD BIRDS 



the best way to swing myself round so as to mount 

 above and look down into it, when I heard a flap, 

 and a splendid young eagle, full-fledged, scrambled 

 to the end of a branch within four yards of me. 

 It had come out of a thick bough at the back of the 

 eyrie, a spot I had not been able to see into with my 

 glasses from under or near the tree. It sat there 

 with its back turned to me the first eagle I had 

 ever seen ! An eagle in a cage is as near the real 

 thing as an eagle in a glass case : I would not walk 

 half a mile to see it. In the idea of a caged eagle is 

 something shocking. 



Our bird sat on the branch-end for a full five 

 minutes ; then it launched itself into the air 

 launched itself for the first time in its life. How fine 

 to see the grand bird give itself to its element, and 

 with ease, slowly and fearless, swing away up the 

 glen ! 



I cannot understand MacGillivray's notion that 

 the eagle, rising from the ground, gets afloat 

 with difficulty, even by strong strokes of the wing. 

 Here was a young eagle that had not been off its 

 nest tree before, and yet sailed with a noble ease. 

 Why need the start for an eagle be harder than the 

 start for a heron ? 



But the most glorious moments were not those 

 when I climbed to the eyrie and watched the young 

 bird perched at the end of the bough or sailing away 

 into the element for which it had been shaped by an 

 aeon of eagle-making. They were half an hour later, 

 when I had come down the old pine swinging on 



