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(Gerbillus erythrourusj in their crops; and I once shot one of a pair, which were busy on the line 

 of rail at Etawah, devouring a Bandicoot Rat (Mus bandicota) which some passing train had cut 

 in two. Occasionally, but rarely, I have found that they had eaten Quails and other birds! 

 Once I shot a male, which was dancing about on the ground in such an astounding fashion, that 

 I killed it to see what the matter was. The bird proved to have been choking. It had swallowed 

 a whole, dry shin-bone and foot of an Antelope ; the bone apparently could not be got down 

 altogether ; and in trying to void it the sharp points of the hoof had stuck in the back of the 

 roof of the mouth. These Eagles, like A.fulvescens, can run very well ; I have particularly noted 

 this on many occasions. In one place I say, ' this was a winged bird, and several times ran from 

 twenty to thirty yards with very great rapidity and cleverness, and but for the fact of its having 

 dropped in a newly ploughed field, and there having been rain during the night, would have 

 given a great chase ; as it was, the soft clods tripped it up every twenty or thirty yards, giving it 

 heavy falls.' " 



Though, so far as my own experience and that of Mr. A. O. Hume goes, the present species 

 is by no means an " Imperial" bird, I cannot say that it is invariably as ignoble as I have found 

 it to be. Mr. A. Anderson, an excellent field-naturalist, writing in ' The Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society' (1871, p. 682), states that " the food of the Imperial Eagle is as disgusting as 

 it is varied according to circumstances; but I do not think the epithets, 'a great hulking Kite' 

 and 'ignoble feeder,' are justly applicable, at least not so far as my experience goes. It is true 

 that the bird will consort with Vultures over a dead bullock, making a hearty meal thereof, and 

 that I have on several occasions found frogs in their crops ; but all Eagles will feed on carrion 

 when pressed by hunger. I have found F. imperialis at times a bold and fearless bird, as the 

 following anecdotes will show. When encamped in the station of Eta, on the 7th of March last, 

 I threw out the body of an Imperial which had just been skinned, and in a few moments I shot 

 a brother Imperial in the act of tearing it to pieces from my tent door. On another occasion a 

 Wokab (Aquila fulvescens) had just deprived a Kite of the entrails of a Fowl, which again was 

 immediately afterwards taken possession of by an Imperial, which in return fell to a charge of 

 my gun in the most public part of my camp. 



" These instances are enough to show that my friend Dr. Tristram has rightly depicted the 

 character of this Eagle when he calls it a ' truly imperial bird,' and, again, that ' there is a beauty 

 and majesty in its movements, and in its greater fearlessness of man when in search of food, 

 which at once attracts one.' Though hunger will compel this bird to eat carrion, there is no 

 doubt that it prefers better food. I have seen them times without number perched on the boughs 

 of trees overlooking swamps, evidently on the look-out for Ducks. 



" Early one morning, when out shooting (the sun had hardly risen), I heard the melancholy 

 notes of the Brahminee Duck (Casarca rutila) overhead (a sound that must be familiar to every 

 Indian sportsman) ; and five minutes later I saw a huge Imperial in the act of devouring the 

 object of its affections, in the middle of a large Antelope-plain. On another occasion I shot a 

 magnificent female black Imperial, the only fully mature bird of the season, when about to take 

 a Duck from the edge of a jheel. As it is now being contended that the European and Indian 

 Imperial Eagles are two distinct birds, and as one rarely gets a black one in this country, I make 

 the following verbatim extract from my note-book, which was jotted down on the spot: — 'Camp, 



