ii8 



British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



Family— FAL CONID^. 



White-Tailed Eagle. 



Halia'etus albicilla, LiNN. 



A LARGER and even more powerful bird than the Golden Eagle, with 

 stronger beak, stouter legs, more formidable and cruel talons, and even 

 greater extent of wing, but with no commensurate spirit, the White-tailed Eagle, 

 with vulturine propensities, feeds chiefly upon what refuse fish and carrion it may 

 discover upon the shore, or else watches the otter and waits iintil it leaves its 

 captured salmon, or is glad to feast upon the dead sheep upon the hill side. Or 

 it makes the feebler mammals its prey, the mountain hare and the rabbit, or the 

 weakly lamb, sometimes pouncing on a Grouse, or robbing the nests of the Gulls 

 and cliff birds of their young, sometimes making a raid vipon the poultry yard, 

 or, sailing out over the sea, striking and impaling upon its claws a basking fish. 

 The Ravens pursue it, and strike at it, so do even Rooks and Gulls ; the Great 

 Skua, the well-known Bonxie, is dear to the shepherds, as this courageous bird 

 will never permit the Eagle to approach its cliffs, and will not rest imtil it has 

 driven it away. 



The loft}^ crags overhanging the sea are the White-tailed Eagle's favourite 

 station, whence it sallies forth to beat the shore in quest of food. Here it makes 

 its eyrie, retiirning year after year to the same station. It was a more common 

 bird than the Golden Eagle but, like that species, has suffered cruel persecution, 

 and for a century or more has been exterminated in all its ancient haunts in 

 England and Wales. In old days it is said to have had eyries on Lundy Island, 

 at the mouth of the Bristol Channel ; on the Dewerstone Rock, near Plymouth ; 

 in the Isles of Wight and Man ; in the Lake District, and probably in Wales ; 

 but at the present time any one who would wish to see it in a wild state must 

 seek it in the Western Isles of Scotland. 



As the immature birds wander south in the autumn and winter the White-tailed 

 Eagle is oftener seen in the South of England than the Golden Eagle, although 

 adult birds are very rare ; on the eastern coasts it is almost a regular autumnal 

 visitor, and the writer has known of several instances of its occurrence of late 

 years in Devon and Cornwall, and on the Ouantock Hills in West Somerset. 



