WEDRH-TAILED EAGLE, 253 



head and neck pure white, and ranges over the whole of North America south 

 to Mexico, and robs other birds of their prey. Benjamin Franklin says, "I wish 

 the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is 

 a bird of bad mural character; he does not get his living honestly. You may 

 have seen him, perched upon some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for him- 

 -ell. he watches the labours of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has 

 at length taken a fish and is bearing' it to his nest dor the support of his mate 

 and young nnes, the Bald Eagle pursues and takes it from him. Besides, lie is a 

 rank coward; the little King bird, no bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly- 

 and drives him out of the district, lie is therefore by no means a proper emblem 

 for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America.*' 



In Australia we have a smaller fishing eagle. Haliaetus leucogaster, closelv 

 allied to the American Eagle, but be is an honest and diligent bird that attends 

 to business and does his own fishing. 



The Wedge-tailed Eagle has a wide range over Tasmania and the whole of 

 Australia, as common in the coastal forests, as on the great waste lands of the 

 interior, until the advance of civilization destroyed its natural food, and it had to 

 turn its attention to the squatters' lambs, and was poisoned and shot in retaliation. 



The Wedge-tailed Eagle is a keen hunter under natural conditions, and is no 

 more a carrion cater than other eagles, and even then likes its meat fresh. The 

 writer well remembers his first encounter with an eagle in North-western Vic- 

 toria; he hail just killed and skinned a sheep that had broken its leg on the creek 

 bank, and was moving away when he heard a commotion among the waiting 

 crows, and looked round in time to see a great eagle flop down to the ground and 

 waddle up to the carcase. 



As far back as lS(i-l Gould wrote that this Eagle was said to kill lambs in 

 Tasmania, and a bitter war was waged against it by the sheep-owners. He also 

 records about the same date that on the Liverpool Plains he saw from thirty to 

 forty at work stripping the Mesh off a dead bullock, in the "Wanderings of a 

 Bush Naturalist," the author calls him the "King of Birds" in Australia, and says 

 that they were so plentiful in Southern Victoria, where be was engaged kangaroo 

 shooting, that he killed over a dozen in the winter. 



The number of eagles in the unoccupied land where native game is plentiful, 

 and sheep have only just been introduced, can be estimated from the fact that 

 when the overseer on an inland station in North-west Kimberley poisoned a 

 freshly-skinned sheep, the writer, on visiting the spot a week later, counted Torty 

 dead eagles in the vicinity of the carcase. 



Before the advent of man our eagles had few enemies, and played a very im- 

 portant part in keeping down the undue increase of the marsupials, big and little, 

 that in spite of the natives swarmed in the scrubs. In those days, woe betide 

 any incautious wallaby, or even large kangaroo, that ventured out of cover in the 

 daytime when a hungry eagle was looking for a dinner for himself and family. 

 Ernest Giles, in his "Australia Twice Traversed," gives a graphic account of such 

 an encounter: "The greatest enemy besides the black man and the dingo, is the 

 large eaglehawk, which, though flying at an enormous height, is always on the 

 watch, but it is only when the wallaby lets itself out on the open stony ridges 

 that the enemy can swoop down upon it. The eagle trusses it with his talons, 

 smashes its head to quiet it, and finally, if a female, it flies away with the victim 

 for food for its young." 



Our eagle is certainly a predatory bird, but he hunts for food to live, and 

 onlv kills when he is hungry, or wants food for his clamouring nestlings. Like 



