166 FOKEST CEEATURES. 



away, the eaglet's days would be numbered. A wall of rock 

 facing the south best suits them. Such an aspect ensures 

 the egg being kept warm during the mother's absence. 

 As inaccessible spots with a fitting shelter and support- 

 ing ledge are not so easily to be found, it happens that 

 a commodious and safe place of this sort will be resorted 

 to by the eagle year after year for the purpose of breed- 

 ing there. The eyrie in Eohrmoos has been thus 

 tenanted during the brooding season since time imme- 

 morial. Although, as is recorded later, the old birds were 

 both shot last year, other eagles have been already seen 

 (I write this in March, 1861) wheeling above the place, 

 evidently intending to breed there in the coming summer. 

 An eligible situation for an eyrie is as little likely to 

 escape their observation, as the small object on the earth 

 when they are looking for food. If therefore eagles are 

 in the neighbourhood, they will surely be found at 

 such spot in the pairing season.* At first the parents 

 bring their fledgling tender morsels, such as the entrails 

 of animals ; then the flesh will be torn apart and laid 

 before him, prepared for his meal ; but later, the entire 

 dead body is flung into the eyrie, and the eaglet is left 

 to tear and devour it as he may. ^\Tien food has been 



^ In the history of the Isle of Wight, by the Eey. Richard "Warner 

 (1795), it is stated that an eagle bred among the crags of Culver Cliff: 

 he was last seen there in 1780, when a man, who descended to the nest, 

 found one young bird. 



