JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



41 



mounting on swift wing the deep blue 

 azure or returning to its mate and 

 young, uttering its note of sorrow it 

 died of a broken heart 



ETHEL B. MORRELL. 

 (We quote the following from Miss 

 Morrell's letter: "Our line of birches 

 above the house was alive with bright 

 wings and songs." * * * "The 

 crows have been condemned recently 

 for robbing our orchard. I went up to 

 day in order to deal justly with them 

 if possible, and I found pearings be- 

 neath the trees but no apples. I am 

 going to free the crows from blame, as 

 I think they do not carry jack-knives." 

 There is often-times, really a difference 

 between fact and fancy. — Ed.) 



CAPTURE OF A GOLDEN EAGLE. 



We went hunting on the upper wa- 

 ters of the North branch of the Dead 

 River and just following the first light 

 snow of November, '99, we had se- 

 cured an exceptionally fine buck near- 

 ly at the top of Wyman's Mt, and as 

 the snow was not deep enough to drag 

 him down at that time, we hung him 

 up in a tree to wait a further fall, ty- 

 ing a handkerchief on one of his horns 

 to keep the foxes from harming him. 



The top of Wyman's Mt. is bare 

 ledge from the fissures of which here 

 and there protrude the gaunt skele- 

 tons of dead spruces, while just below 

 the bare ledges of heavy coniferous 

 growth encircles the peak. It was 

 just at the upper edge of this growth 

 that we hung the buck and four or five 

 days later we made a trip up there to 

 see that he was all right and found 

 such an immense quantity of fox 

 tracks about the cleanings which were 

 partly eaten, that we determined ro 

 try for one. A trip of 18-miles was 

 necessary to secure traps, and we set 

 four in favorite positions before night. 



Visiting the traps two days afterwards 

 we found that we had been successful 

 in our efforts as a fine fox had been 

 caught in the trap that was set in the 

 middle of the old lumber road just 

 above the cleanings, but something 

 had killed the fox after a terrific 

 struggle and left him terribly mang- 

 led. 



The ground for a distance covered 

 by the circumference of the circle, us- 

 ing the pin of the trap as a center had 

 been swept perfectly clean of snow, 

 leaves, chips and every particle of 

 movable debris, and the destroyer of 

 the fox had left absolutely no trace 

 of his identity. The frozen ground 

 was torn up in places and the fox had 

 put up a good fight and died game. 

 We found him in the attitude which is 

 truthfully represented by Mr. Gifford 

 in the most excellent group he made of 

 them from my description, and our 

 curiosity was so aroused that we made 

 up our minds to take advantage of the 

 well known habit of wild animals to 

 return to feed upon the carcass of 

 their prey. Consequently after first 

 staking the body of the fox to the 

 ground, we set all sorts of traps 

 around it and awaited results. For a 

 week or ten days nothing turned up, 

 although we visited the trap every 

 day, then came a second snow, a heavy 

 driving northeasterly storm. The 

 morning following we again visited the 

 trap and there to our surprise we 

 found a golden eagle securly caught by 

 one foot. He was nearly dead from 

 prolonged exposure, when we found 

 him,— therefore we attempted to take 

 him from the trap alive, having in 

 mind presenting him to some zoologi- 

 cal garden, but even in this condition 

 there was sufficient fight left in him to 

 make it extremely interesting for us, — 

 therefore, there was nothing left for us 

 to do but to kill him, which we did, 

 and after taking careful observation of 



