18 



THE OOLOGIST 



The Bald Eagle in Florida. 



Of all the birds that it has been my 

 good fortune to study here in Florida 

 during the past eleven years, none 

 have been so baffling and unsatisfac- 

 tory from the point of view of the 

 Oologist as the Bald Eagle, 



Each year I promise myself that 1 

 will waste no more time chasing 

 around after this bird, but every win- 

 ter about November first I begin to 

 look over my climbing apparatus and 

 wonder if this year won't be a better 

 one for me, and usually decide that it 

 will so by December 1st I am chasing 

 around every spare moment looking 

 up all the old sites and hunting for 

 new ones so that by the last of Janu- 

 ary I have generally climbed into no 

 less than 20 to 30 Eagle nests with 

 the results that I usually have a very 

 few sets (if I am real lucky) and a 

 bunch of photographs that are general- 

 ly unsatisfactory to me and an in- 

 grown conviction that I will never 

 waste another season on this noble 

 bird of prey. Bald Eagles are what 

 my late lamented friend Billy Crispin 

 said once, "a darned unsatisfactory 

 bird for the Oologist." 



However, one cannot spend as much 

 time as I have in the past eleven years 

 with any respect and rever it. I will 

 record some of these facts for future 

 ornithologists who might wish to study 

 this bird, provided however, they don't 

 put it off too long in the future, be- 

 cause I am very much afraid that Bald 

 Eagles will soon be classed with Paro- 

 quetes and Sand Hill Cranes. 



Baldy usually nests here in Florida 

 from early in December, (rarely be- 

 fore) with the ones in the interior and 

 Northern parts of the State, until Feb- 

 ruary 15th with the ones of the Coast 

 and the Keys in the Southern part. 

 My idea of this great difference in time 

 is account of the food supply, is the 

 Eagles of the interior feed more gen- 



erally on Ducks and Rabbits, while his 

 brother on the coast is more of a fish 

 eater and not being so good a fisher- 

 man as the Osprey waits until this 

 bird begins to nest so as to have a 

 sure supply of fish for its young, as I 

 have noted that the Eagles of the in- 

 terior do not as a rule harry the Os- 

 prey nearly as much as the ones of the 

 Coast. 



Eagles are becoming more scarce 

 in all parts of the state, due partly to 

 the settling up of the country, but 

 mainly due to the fact that every 

 man's hand is against this grand bird. 

 Alas, the Eagle is fond of young 

 "Razor Back Pig" and as the natives 

 have been known also to like this 

 dish, the Eagle naturally has to suffer. 

 I have known of several instances 

 where the farmer has waited until the 

 nest contained young, cut the tree and 

 destroy the young and at that time 

 shoot the parents who are so soliciti- 

 ous for the young that they lose their 

 usual caution. Then again Eagles do 

 not always lay every year, and as they 

 usually lay one and two eggs, very 

 rarely three, they naturally cannot in- 

 crease very fast. Contrary to the con- 

 clusions of most ornithologists I find 

 that the Bald Eagle will many times 

 lay the second set if the first one is 

 collected and I know for a fact that 

 this will happen with over 50 per cent, 

 of the pairs. Only on one occasion did 

 I ever find four young in a nest but 

 a careful study of this pair showed 

 that they had been unable to raise any 

 young for three years and undoubtedly 

 Nature helped them in this instance to 

 sort of even up. For three years this 

 pair had been broken up by our tim- 

 berman cutting the tree in which their 

 nest was located, each time this pair 

 moved back in the timber about a 

 mile and built and laid the next year 

 and was cut each time until they 

 moved beyond our timber operations. 



