VULTURES 241 



The eagle's nest, which is sometimes as much as nine feet high, 

 is called an " eyrie ", and is nearly always placed very far up on 

 the side of a steep cliff or rock, where nobody is likely to be able 

 to get at it. It is always made of sticks, which the eagle heaps 

 loosely together upon a ledge of rock. 



The young eaglets are very hungry little creatures. All day 

 long they are clamouring for food; and you may see the parent 

 birds constantly engaged in satisfying their wants. Now a plump 

 hare is brought home, and now a rabbit. Or a partridge or 

 a grouse will be divided among the occupants of the nest. Or 

 even a lamb will be carried away from a flock. No wonder 

 that the gamekeeper and the shepherd do not like to see an eagle 

 near their charges. 



Eagles were of old occasionally known to carry off children. 

 Once an eagle snatched up a little baby, which had been wrapped 

 in a shawl by its mother and laid down to sleep in a corner of the 

 harvest field, while she was at work, and carried it off to its eyrie. 



In her despair the mother ran to the foot of the cliff on which 

 the eyrie was built, and climbed up it, although it was so steep that 

 not even a man had ever succeeded in scaling it before. In the nest 

 she found her child alive and unhurt; for the shawl in which it 

 was wrapped had prevented the eagle's claws from hurting it. 

 Catching it up in her arms, the brave woman began to descend 

 the cliff, and succeeded in reaching the ground in safety. 



VULTURES (Family VULTURID^) 



The Vultures are the last great family of the order Accipitres. 



In many respects they are very much like eagles. They 

 have the same broad and mighty wings, the same powerful talons, 

 and the same strong and sharply-hooked beak. But the shape 

 of the beak is not quite the same, the middle toe is much longer 

 than the others, and the feathery fringe that eagles have over the 

 eye is wanting. 



These are differences of structure; but there are also differences 

 of habit, the chief of which is that vultures seldom kill their own 



(M868) K 



