36 WHITE-HEADED EAGLE. 
the signal for our liero, who, launching into the air, instantly gives chace, 
soon gains on the Fish-Hawk, each exerts his utmost to mount ahove the 
other, displaying in these rencounters the most elegant and sublime 
aerial evolutions. The unencumbered Eagle rapidly advances, and is 
just on the point of reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, 
probably 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 Avater, and bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods. 
These predatory attacks, and defensive manoeuvres, of the Eagle and 
the Fish-Hawk, are matters of daily observation along the whole of our 
seacoast, from Florida to New England ; and frequently excite great in- 
terest in the spectators. Sympathy, however, on this, as on most other 
occasions, generally sides with the honest and laborious sufferer, in oppo- 
sition to the attacks of power, injustice and rapacity ; qualities for 
which our hero is so generally notorious, and which, in his superior, 
man^ are certainly detestable. As for the feelings of the poor fish, they 
seem altogether out of the question. 
When driven, as he sometimes is, by the combined courage and 
perseverance of the Fish-Hawks from their neighborhood, and forced to 
hunt for himself, he retires more inland, in search of young pigs, of 
which ho destroys great numbers. In the loAver parts of Virginia and 
North Carolina, where the inhabitants raise vast herds of those animals, 
complaints of this kind are very general against him. He also de- 
stroys young lambs in the early part of spring ; and Avill sometimes 
attack old sickly sheep, aiming furiously at their eyes. 
In corroboration of the remarks I have myself made on the manners 
of the Bald Eagle, many accounts have reached me from various 
persons of respectability, living on or near our seacoast ; the sub- 
stance of all these I shall endeavor to incorporate with the present 
account. 
Mr. John L. Gardiner, who resides on an island of tliree thousand 
acres, about three miles from the eastern point of Long Island, from 
which it is separated by Gardiner's Bay, and Avho has consequently 
many opportunities of observing the habits of these birds, has favored 
me with a number of interesting particulars on this subject ; for Avhich 
I beg leave thus publicly to return my grateful acknoAvledgment. 
"The Bald Eagles," says this gentleman, "remain on this island 
during the Avhole winter. They can be most easily discovered on even- 
ings by their loud snoring while asleep, on high oak trees ; and when 
awake, their hearing seems to be nearly as good as their sight. I think 
I mentioned to you that I had myself seen one flying with a lamb ten 
days old, and which it dropped on the ground, from about ten or twelve 
feet high. The struggling of the lamb, more than its Aveight, prevented 
