THE EAGLES 83 



It is long since the Golden Eagle nested in England, 

 though two and three centuries ago the great bird was by 

 no means an uncommon sight even in the south. In 1668, 

 a nest found in the Peak district of Derbyshire was 

 described by the famous naturalist, Francis Willughby, in 

 whose day it was said to haunt the crags and precipices of 

 Snowdon. A hundred years ago, or less, it nested in the 

 wilder parts of the beautiful Lake district. 



From time to time, a newspaper paragraph reports the 

 visit of one of these giant birds to our south-eastern and 

 south-western shires — to Kent and Surrey, to Dorsetshire 

 and Hampshire. For instance, one was shot near Salis- 

 bury in February 1905, and another near Blandford"in 

 February 1908. 



A good many supposed Golden Eagles seen or shot in 

 England are really young White-tailed Eagles, probably 

 visitors from the Continent. They ought easily to be 

 distinguished from the Golden Eagle, for their legs are not 

 clothed with feathers. 



In Ireland, the Golden Eagle has had an ill time, of 

 late years. There are no great landlords, as in Scotland, 

 willing and wishful to preserve and protect him, and he is 

 fast disappearing. In 1907 one observer, Mr. John Walpole 

 Bond, writing to the Field, reckoned that there must be 

 only about a dozen pairs left in the island. These could 

 only be found among " the loneliest and most romantic 

 mountain ranges of Donegal, Mayo, and possibly of Galway 

 and Kerry." 



Mr. Bond spent days watching one of these sur- 

 vivors, in County Mayo. It was a male bird whose mate 

 had died (poisoned, very likely, by some of their many 

 human foes). He still loved to keep near his old eyrie 

 which was "some four hundred feet down a fearsomely 



