60 THE BIRDS OF NEW JERSEY. 



New Jersey, but they are becoming scarcer every year. 

 Occasionally a number are seen in migrations. The Gold; 

 en Eagle is merely an occasional straggler from the west 

 and is seen very rarely. The Bald Eagle is nearly three 

 feet in length and sometimes measures six or seven feet 

 from tip to tip of wings ; bill, two and a half inches. The 

 general color of the plumage is a dark slate, the head, neck 

 and tail being white and the bill yellow. The young 

 birds lack the white head and tail. It nests in trees, the 

 number of eggs being two or three, the color gray and the 

 size three inches by two and one-fourth. Its food is 

 principally fish, which it either picks up along the shores 

 or takes away from some industrious fish-hawk or king- 

 fisher ; also small animals and carrion. The Golden 

 Eagle is only a trifle smaller than the Bald Eagle ; the 

 general coloring of the plumage is a slate brown, with a 

 yellowish tint on the head and some white at the base of 

 the tail. Its nest is built on cliffs and rocky ledges ; the 

 eggs are two or three in number, gray with brown spots. 

 The Golden Eagle can always be distinguished from the 

 Bald by having the legs feathered all the way to the toes, 

 while the latter has the lower part of the legs bare. 



JEgret, White^ or WViite or Snowy Heron. — This 

 most beautiful and elegant bird is little more than a remem- 

 brance in New Jersey, the gun of the market hunter having 

 almost exterminated it. Its long, drooping feathers have 

 long been in demand for aigrettes. Formerly numbers of 

 them were seen in the southern part of the state and per- 

 haps a few breed there yet, but the demand for their 

 feathers for millinery has almost exterminated them, even 

 in the Southern Atlantic states, where they were former- 

 ly very numerous. This bird is about two feet in length, 

 its bill being three and a half inches long. Its plumage 

 is of a pure white; the legs are black and the feet yellow. 

 It builds a nest of sticks in bushes overhanging the water, 

 the number of the eggs being three to five, the color a 



