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THE OOLOGIST 



eral years ago when E. E. Moffat and 

 Ramon Graham collected and sent 

 them to Washington. The nest was 

 composed of rock and tree moss, fine 

 dead grasses, few feathers, several 

 bunches of cotton and plenty Cotton 

 tail Rabbit hair. The nesting cavity 

 was as follows and was taken down in 

 three parts; nest eight inches below 

 the entrance, nest in a Red Bellied 

 Woodpecker's hole; entrance 2y 2 

 inches in diameter. A fork was eight 

 inches above the hole; right inside the 

 hole was much larger and resembled 

 an egg, pole tree inches inside the 

 diameter. The tree was Spanish oak, 

 dead and very shaky and probably 

 would not have stood another storm, 

 nesting cavity and eggs collected at 

 6 p. m." 



Ramon Graham, 

 Ft. Worth, Texas. 



The Power of the Bald Eagle. 



Our national bird, the Bald Eagle, 

 wild in its native haunts, is so large, 

 so majestic and flies with an evidence 

 of so enormous strength that one is im- 

 pressed with the thought that here is 

 the king of birds. On one occasion, 

 while eating my lunch in the shade of 

 a little bush on a southern prairie, I 

 saw one carry off a lamb, writes T. 

 Gilbert Pearson of the Audubon So- 

 ciety. The noise of some running 

 sheep not far away caused me to look 

 up just as the Eagle rose from the 

 ground with its prey. It did not once 

 pause and flutter it wings, as birds of 

 prey sometimes do, in order to get a 

 better hold of its burden, for it seemed 

 to have seized the lamb securely when 

 it first made its downward plunge. 

 The bird flew with truly surprising 

 swiftness and bore the weight of its 

 "kill" without apparent effort. I 

 watched it for half a mile or more un- 

 til it disappeared in the forest, and 



not once did it show any indication 

 of weariness. 



Years later I read an account writ- 

 ten by a bird student who watched an 

 eagle alight on the beach after having 

 carried a lamb weighing more than 

 the bird itself for a distance of five 

 miles across a body of water. It is 

 hard to believe that a bird may be 



strong enough to accomplish such a 

 task as that. 



Bald Eagles catch many of the lar- 

 ger water birds, especially wounded 

 ducks. On the lakes and sounds 

 where much hunting is carried on in 

 winter many hundreds of crippled 

 wild fowl are left behind when the 

 flocks migrate north in spring. They 

 fall an easy prey to the eagles that 

 usually frequent such regions. 



Once I saw one capture a broken- 

 winged coot in Currituck Sound, North 

 Carolina. At the approach of its big 

 enemy the coot dived, but soon had 

 to come up to breath, when the Eagle 

 instantly swooped. Again and again 

 the helpless bird dived and swam un- 

 der water, but the Eagle was ever on 

 the watch, and in the end they went 

 away through the air together. 



It is erroneous, however, to regard 

 the Bald Eagle as a bald-headed bird, 

 for its crown is well covered. When 

 three years old it passes through a 

 moulting period, which results in the 

 bird's acquiring a white head, neck 

 and tail. Many bald eagles are ob- 

 served every year that do not possess 

 these feathers; such birds, of course, 

 are still in their youthful plumage. — 

 San Francisco Sunday Chronicle. — W. 

 A. Strong, San Jose, Cal. 



