THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 



Aqttila chrysaetus (Linnaeus). 

 Plate 32. 



This grand bird, although now confined as a resident to the wildest parts of 

 the Highlands of Scotland, yet at one time had its eyrie in England. Willoughby 

 described a nest found in the Peak of Derbyshire in 1668, and also records that 

 in his time it bred on the Snowdon Hills. It lingered much later in the Lake 

 District and on the Borders, where, Bewick states, it formerly bred on the steepest 

 part of Cheviot, while over the border, in Scotland, eyries are said to have been 

 occupied "for some years after 1850 in Ayrshire and Kirkcudbrightshire" 

 (Howard Saunders's Mamtal, 2nd ed.). 



The Golden Eagle inhabits Europe, where it is found in mountainous districts, 

 as well as North Africa, Asia, and America ; and various races, showing difference 

 in size and colour, have been distinguished. 



Very early in the year the royal birds prepare their nest, usually returning to 

 one occupied in previous seasons, which is situated on a ledge in the steep and 

 rocky face of a precipice or inaccessible walls of some wild corrie among the hills. 

 The site is chosen so that a projecting crag shelters the eggs and young from 

 the weather. Occasionally the nest is so placed that it is not difficult to reach it 

 from below, and I have seen one only about twenty feet above a broken, grassy 

 slope, while others, again, are placed in trees. Outwardly the eyrie is constructed 

 of sticks, forming a rough platform, on which are put pieces of heather and other 

 material, and in the centre is a cup-shaped depression, small in proportion to the 

 rest of the nest, which is lined with the flattened blades of the wood-rush {Lusula 

 sylvatica), a common plant on the Scottish mountains. The eggs are laid early 

 in April, and are usually two, though three may sometimes be found. They vary 

 considerably in colour and markings, even in the same nest, and may be dull white, 

 with either a grey or huffish tinge and mottled with shades of reddish- or purple- 

 brown, while others, again, are sometimes pure white. The young, clothed at first 

 in white down, are carefully fed and tended by the parent birds, who remove the 



feathers and fur from game before presenting it. 



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