194 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



SEA EAGLE. 



Haliaetus albicilla (L). 



There can be no reasonable doubt that this Eagle tenanted 

 the precipices of our mountains for many centuries, but the 

 earliest trustworthy report of any eyrie occupied by this bird is 

 supplied by John Aubrey. This authority sent his information 

 to John Eay in a letter, dated London, December 15, 1692 : 

 ' Mr. Gibson of Queens-College, Oxon, of Westmorland, saith that 

 in Westmorland, Eagles do breed in Willow-Cragg in the Parish 

 of Bampton.' 



Clarke, who wrote in 1787, alludes to the same eyrie, saying, 

 ' At the robbing of an eagle's nest at Wallow Crag near Haws- 

 water in Westmorland, there were found 35 fish, besides 7 

 lambs, and other provisions for the young ones.' 2 He lays 

 special stress on the fact that ' some of the eagle species are 

 fishers, indeed most of them will occasionally catch fish ; and, 

 strange to tell ! I have seen them fall quick upon the Lake and 

 bring out a fish.' 



Allusion has been made already to the fact that the Eagles 

 which bred in Patterdale and Martindale were Golden Eagles, 

 and that the Golden Eagles sometimes nested near Keswick. 

 It must be considered extremely doubtful whether more than 

 one pair of Sea Eagles nested near Keswick in the last century. 

 Whatever may have been the case earlier, I think we must 

 infer from the evidence at our disposal that only one pair of Sea 

 Eagles nested annually in Borrowdale or one of the other eyries 

 which the birds sometimes used. The Crosthwaite men seem to 

 have harried the Borrowdale eyrie whenever they had the oppor- 

 tunity, but there is no reason to suppose that they spared other 

 eyries, if such were tenanted in their large parish. But the 

 reader had best form his own conclusions from the data which 

 the Eev. H. D. Kawnsley has obligingly permitted me to copy 

 out of his parish book. It will be observed that these entries 

 run from 1713 to 1765, after which I could find no further 



1 Ray's Correspondence, p. 269. Wallow Crag is really in the Parish 

 of Shap. 



2 Survey of the Lakes, Appendix. 



