84 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



led to the bird's wholesale destruction by means of poisoned meat. 

 But it is very pleasant to know that now, on many deer forests, 

 it is strictly protected. Under thiswise discrimination its numbers 

 have of late years actually increased in these islands, until at the 

 present moment it is no doubt less rare than the Eagle we shall 

 mention next — once, by a long way, the commoner bird. 



The head and neck of the Golden Eagle are covered with 

 feathers of a loose scale-like form and rufus colouring, and this 

 is its only claim to the title " golden." This Eagle no longer 

 nests in England as it once did, but in the north and west of 

 Scotland, and in a few places in Ireland, it still breeds. It 

 exhibits a most remarkable shrewdness in the choice of a site for 

 its nest, which is almost always at the most absolutely inacces- 

 sible point of the mountain side. Not always, for there is a very 

 well known instance of a poor man in County Kerry who supported 

 his family during a summer of want by pillage of an Eagle's eyrie. 

 He clipped the wings of the young birds so that it was a long 

 time before they left the nest. This bird has a wide distribution. 

 It is found in almost every European country, in Asia, on the 

 East as far as the Himalayas, and down to the Atlas in Algeria. 

 It is possibly this species which is in Central Asia trained to 

 capture antelopes. 



The Golden Eagle is often seen to be followed in its flight, 

 mobbed by hooded crows, just as the smaller birds of prey are 

 mobbed and insulted by small birds of different species. 



The White-tailed Cinereous, or Sea-Eagle, is the only other 

 British' species that requires mention here. It is, as its name 

 Haliaetus implies, a bird of the coasts. Its food, none the less is 



