THE SHORT-TAILED EAGLE. 



287 



tained them to be young, I should have most certainly taken them for 

 another species, particularly as they were as large as the adults. When 

 I observed the birds, they were six in number, all perched on a very 

 large tree, where the eyrie, was, and where the four young had no doubt 

 been hatched. I first brought down the two old birds, and afterwards 

 three of the young ones, but the fourth escaped into the wood. Among 

 the three young, there were one male and two females, and it is proba- 

 ble that the one which escaped was a second male. The three young 

 ones were all exactly coloured as the one represented in my eighth 

 plate, which is a female. Some months after, I shot other young birds 

 of the same species, but more advanced in age, and already showing 

 some red feathers on the rump, while the head and under parts of the 

 body had a number of black feathers. It hence appears, it is not till 

 the third moult that this species takes its beautiful colours, as repre- 

 sented in my seventh plate. 



The young has the base of the beak bluish, the beak of a horn 

 colour, and the feet yellowish ; the general colour being a uniform 

 brown, more clear on the head and neck, and more deep on the rest of 

 the body ; yet all the feathers are edged with a paler and clearer tint. 



The short-tailed eagle, like the vultures, feeds on all sorts of gar- 

 bage ; yet it frequently attacks the young antelopes. It prowls about 

 houses, where it tries to surprise lambs or sickly sheep ; and the young 

 ostriches, while little, become also its prey, particularly when they 

 chance to be separated from their parents. The colonists of Auteniqua 

 call the bird the mountain cock (berg-haan), a name, indeed, which 

 they apply to all large birds of prey, and particularly to eagles. 



A single glance at this bird will convince any one that it has not the 

 characteristics ascribed to the eagles : its claws not being so strongly 

 curved, and its beak comparatively less powerful. It is, therefore, one 

 of the doubtful species, as much resembling the vultures as the eagles, 

 and ought to occupy, by the side of the CafFer eagle, a place between the 

 eagles and the vultures. 



The district in which I most commonly met with the short-tailed 

 eagle was upon the confines of the Queur Boom, where I pitched my 

 camp, near Lagoa Bay. They do not fly in troops, and many of them 

 are never seen together, except when a concourse of other birds of prey 

 has attracted all those of the district to some piece of carrion. In that 

 case alone they flock together, but after feeding each pair takes a dif- 

 ferent route to their respective haunts in the neighbouring mountains 

 or forests. 



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