THE LACCADIVES AND THE WEST COAST. 425: 
The White-bellied Sea Eagle is very voracious, and during 
the morning I watched them incessantly returning to one or 
other of the | big trees, bearing sea snakes, 5 to 6 feet in length, 
in their claws, ‘which they there devoured at their ease. Once 
or twice I saw them eating something on the rocks, but, as a 
rule, they always returned with their prey to some ereat bare 
sea o’ergazing limb of one of the giant trees. 
One that I shot as he swept over head high above the 
stunted trees that concealed me (for after a few shots 
they became wary enough) had in his claws the entire liver and 
stomach of a goat. Had he found it floating at sea? Had he 
brought it as an especial delicacy all the long miles from the 
coast ? Certainly nothing of the kind was to be obtained on the 
island, which is entirely “uninhabited, and where not the small- 
est Mammal was observed by any one. 
It is a fine sight to see these eagles striking one after the 
other in rapid succession. Soaring far far above the highest 
tree in the island, often I should judge from a height of at least 
1,000 feet, they come down with nearly closed wings, and with 
a rushing roar, like that of a cannon ball, ina _ per feetly direct 
line, making an angle of about 60° with the water, which they 
scarcely seem to reach before they are aguin mounting with 
heavy flaps and with a yard or two of snake hanging dead in 
their talons. 
One snake I recovered, shooting its captor, less than a minute 
after it had been seized. It was stone dead (though we all 
know how tenaceous of life, these reptiles are) and had its head 
and neck pierced through in several places by the eagle’s cruel 
claws, its whole skull being completely crushed up. 
It is easy to see what these birds chiefly prey on, and where 
they mostly take their meals, for the ground below the nest 
trees is often thickly strewed with the vertebree of snakes of 
which we found innumerable pieces from 6 inches to even 2 
feet in length. 
There were a few fish bones, a sheep’s head, or at least part 
of it, and one upper carpace of a tiny turtle, but it was the 
remains of sea snakes that chiefly composed their kitchen- 
middens. 
As to other birds there were scarcely any to record ; about 
the base of the cliffs nestling in caves, one of which at any 
rate is of considerable size, were numerous Blue Rock Pigeons, 
—but these never appeared to visit the upper portions of the 
island, and seemed, from what I observed, to proceed daily to the 
Mainland, to feed, returning about 4 p.m. I may notice that all 
the many Pigeons which I shot here, on the Vingorla Rocks, 
F3 
