42 
SEA EAGLE. 
is simple, it indulges freely, uses great exercise, breathes the purest air, 
is healthy, vigorous and long-lived. The lords of the creation themselves 
might derive some useful hints from these facts, were they not already, 
in general, too wise, or too proud, to learn from their inferiors, the fowls 
of the air and beasts of the field. 
FA L CO OSSIFILl G VS.* 
SEA EAGLE. 
[Plate LV. Fig. 2.] 
Sea Eagle, Arct. Zoul. p. 194, No. 86, A. 
This eagle inhabits the same countries, frequents the same situations, 
and lives on the same kind of food, as the Bald Eagle, Avitli whom it is 
often seen in company. It resembles this last so much in figure, size, 
form of the bill, legs and chxAvs, and is so often seen associating with it, 
both along the Atlantic coast, and in the vicinity of our lakes and large 
rivers, that I have strong suspicions, notwithstanding ancient and very 
respectable authorities to the contrary, of its being the same species, 
only in a diiferent stage of color. 
That several years elapse before the young of the Bald Eagle receive 
the white head, neck and tail ; and that during the intermediate period 
their plumage strongly resembles that of the Sea Eagle, I am satisfied 
from my own observation on three several birds kept by persons of this 
city. One of these belonging to the late Mr. Enslen, collector of natu- 
■ ral subjects for the Emperor of Austria, was confidently believed by him 
to be the Black, or Sea Eagle, until the fourth year, when the plumage 
on the head, tail and tail-coverts, began gradually to become white ; the 
bill also exchanged its dusky hue for that of yellow; and before its 
death, this bird, which I frequently examined, assumed the perfect dress 
of the full-plumaged Bald Eagle. Another circumstance corroborating 
these suspicions, is the variety that occurs in the colors of the Sea Eagle. 
Scarcely two of these are found to be alike, their plumage being more 
or less diluted with white. In some, the chin, breast and tail-coverts, 
are of a deep brown ; in others nearly white ; and in all evidently un- 
fixed, and varying to a pure white. Their place and manner of build- 
ing, on liigh trees, in the neighborhood of lakes, large rivers, or the 
ocean, exactly similar to the Bald Eagle, also strengthens the belief. 
At the celebrated cataract of Niagara, great numbers of these birds, 
* This is not a distinct species, but the young of the preceding, the Falco leuco- 
cejphalus. 
