WASHINGTON EAGLE AND FISH-HAWK. 301 



soon gains upon the Fish- Hawk ; each exerts his utmost to 

 mount above the other, displaying in these rencountres, the 

 most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unencum- 

 bered eagle rapidly advances, and is just upon the point of 

 reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, proba- 

 bly of despair and honest execration, the latter drops his 

 fish ; the eagle poising himself for a moment, as if to take a 

 more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in 

 his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten 

 booty silently away to the wood." 



As a further illustration of the dashing style of the Bald 

 Eagle when engaged in these audacious robberies, Wilson 

 says: 



" I was lately told," continues Mr. Gardiner, "by a man 

 of truth, that he saw an eagle rob a hawk of its fish, and the 

 hawk seemed so enraged as to fly down at the eagle, while 

 the eagle very deliberately, in the air, threw himself partly 

 over on his back, and, while he grasped with one foot the 

 fish, extended the other to threaten or seize the hawk. I 

 have known several hawks unite to attack the eagle ; but 

 never knew a single one to do it. The eagle seems to regard 

 the hawk as the hawks do the king-birds, only as teasing, 

 troublesome fellows." 



Can even Jonathan's audacity vault higher than this cool 

 specimen of the manner in evil-doing of the bird of his en- 

 sign? I have often witnessed similar scenes among the 

 Ariondac mountains at the north, where their vaulting crests 

 throw down huge shadows on the bosom of an hundred 

 sleeping lakes. Crouched in their deep lairs of silence, these 

 lakes and lakelets gleam through their blue depths with 

 many a burnished legion of rare and splendid fish great 

 salmon- trout and wondrous shoals from mountain-brook, 

 slow inlet and tributary river! Here is the rich feeding- 

 ground of the noble Osprey. Though they are friendly and 

 sociable birds in an eminent degree, you seldom find more 

 than a single pair foraging upon the same lake habitually ; 



