WASHINGTON EAGLE AND FISH-HAWK. 
801 
soon gains upon the Fish-Hawk ; each exerts his utmost to 
mount above the other, displaying in these rencountres, the 
most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unencum- 
bered eagle rapidly advances, and is just upon the point of 
reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, proba- 
bly of despair and honest execration, the latter drops his 
fish ; the eagle poising himself for a moment, as if to take a 
more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in 
his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten 
booty silently away to the wood." 
As a further illustration of the dashing style of the Bald 
Eagle when engaged in these audacious robberies, Wilson 
says: 
" I was lately told," continues Mr. Gardiner, " by a man 
of truth, that he saw an eagle rob a hawk of its fish, and the 
hawk seemed so enraged as to fly down at the eagle, while 
the eagle very deliberately, in the air, threw himself partly 
over on his back, and, while he grasped with one foot the 
fish, extended the other to threaten or seize the hawk. I 
have known several hawks unite to attack the eagle ; but 
never knew a single one to do it. The eagle seems to regard 
the hawk as the hawks do the king-birds, only as teasing, 
troublesome fellows." 
Can even Jonathan's audacity vault higher than this cool 
specimen of the manner in evil-doing of the bird of his en- 
sign ? I have often witnessed similar scenes among the 
Ariondac mountains at the north, where their vaulting crests 
throw down huge shadows on the bosom of an hundred 
sleeping lakes. Crouched in their deep lairs of silence, these 
lakes and lakelets gleam through their blue depths with 
many a burnished legion of rare and splendid fish — great 
salmon-trout and wondrous shoals from mountain-brook, 
slow inlet and tributary river! Here is the rich feeding- 
ground of the noble Osprey. Though they are friendly and 
sociable birds in an eminent degree, you seldom find more 
than a single pair foraging upon the same lake habitually ; 
