150 BIRDS. 



they became extinct from being continually robbed, the old 

 birds at last becoming too old to breed ; he never heard of many 

 being killed. They fight a good deal amongst themselves. A 

 pair were observed so engaged in Hoy, and a short time after- 

 wards a dead one was found by a shooting-party in the heather, 

 most probably one of the combatants. A pair which were kept 

 tame in Hoy once began to build a nest in their cage, but some 

 one stupidly took the sticks away when cleaning the cage, 

 and they never tried again. Before that time the two birds 

 lived peaceably together, but after that they began to fight, and 

 a few years after the hen killed the cock. 



About forty years ago a Sea-Eagle came ashore, in Hoy, dead, 

 fast in a fish, and another time a halibut was found with an 

 eagle's feet still in its back, the bird having rotted off: this 

 latter case, however, was in Shetland. 



A pair of Sea-Eagles were observed in Hoy fighting in the 

 air, and were seen to fall dead, or nearly so, by a keeper who 

 picked them up. They were stuffed, and in the possession of 

 Mr. Heddle's father at one time. The man who found them is 

 still living in Stromness (May 1888). 



White-tailed Eagles when excited or angry ruffle out the 

 small feathers of their neck, and keep them stiff. 



We have been, perhaps, unnecessarily full in our notes on 

 the Orkney eagles, but as a breeding species they are now quite 

 extinct, and rarely occur even as a passing migrant. 1 Indeed the 

 Sea-Eagle is rapidly disappearing all through Scotland, so it be- 

 hoves naturalists to try and make their memorials accurate and 

 full, seeing that, in the Orkneys at least, this is all that is left us. 



Astur palumbarius (L.). Goshawk. 



[Obs. Though several writers, from Low downwards, have 

 recorded this bird as common and breeding in the Orkneys, in 

 one instance -adding, in a great flight of imagination, that they 

 did so in " tall fir trees," there can be no doubt that all this 

 is an error, and that some other bird, perhaps the Peregrine, 

 has been taken for it. 



1 Mr. Millais in all his experience has only once seen this species in Orkney. 



