THE AMERICAN EAGLE 
35 
donor of the prizes, a gentleman living 
near the reservation. The bird house 
building contestants were assured that 
their houses would all be installed in 
the Parkway, and this program was 
■carried out. It was necessary to em- 
ploy a motor truck to collect and carry 
the seven hundred houses that the com- 
petition brought forth. 
The prizes were awarded with ap- 
propriate exercises at each school. One 
of the classes of a public school in 
Bronx Borough is shown in the accom- 
panying illustration. The bird houses, 
attached to trees, are now used by 
wrens and other birds. In one instance 
a fight between robins and bluebirds 
for possession resulted in the bluebirds 
using the inside of the house and the 
robins building a nest on the roof. 
Alaska Bounty Law Threatens to 
Annihilate the American Eagle. 
FROM THE NEWS BUREAU, PUBLIC INFORMA- 
TION COMMITTEE, AMERICAN MUSEUM 
OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW 
YORK CITY. 
Much has been written in depreca- 
tion of the permitted extermination of 
the wild pigeon. Formerly found in 
almost incredible numbers in some 
parts of the United States, the species 
was utterly wiped out by unrestricted 
shooting and the destruction of its 
nests. And so rapid was the process 
of its extinction that the bird had van- 
ished before the public realized its need 
of protection. 
A similar fate now imminently 
threatens the “American” or bald 
eagle — our national emblem and one 
of the most beautiful and magnificent 
of our native birds. And by a curious 
irony, the destruction is being accom- 
plished at public expense, as provided 
in the bounty law passed by the Terri- 
torial Legislature of Alaska on April 
30, 1917. 
The bald eagle has never been an 
abundant species. Estimates of its 
numbers have generally been greatly 
exaggerated. It is only on the basis of 
the occupied nests that its real num- 
bers — or rather its real scarcity — can 
be estimated. Computations based on 
observations of the birds themselves 
are obviously unreliable. For, con- 
spicuous by its size and habits, and by 
its preference for coast regions and 
large rivers over remote forests and 
mountains, it is very apt to attract con- 
siderable attention, and the same indi- 
viduals are doubtless seen again and 
again. This will be realized in con- 
sideration of the bird’s natural lon- 
gevity and strong powers of flight, 
which make it possible for a single indi- 
vidual to be seen repeatedly over a 
period of many years and in widely 
separated places. 
Lip to the present time, the only 
region where the bald eagle has main- 
tained encouraging numbers has been 
THE AMERICAN EAGLE. 
Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of 
Natural History. 
the coastal region and large river val- 
leys of Alaska. Here it did breed in 
numbers surprisingly large for a bird 
of its size. But the Alaskan bounty 
law, which provides for the payment of 
fifty cents for each eagle destroyed, 
although it went into effect only on 
April 30, 1917, had already, by April 
10, 1919, resulted in the killing of 
5/00 eagles. Moreover, the bounty 
seekers have undoubtedly not confined 
their depredations to Alaskan territory, 
but have extended them into the Brit- 
ish provinces adjoining Alaska, in order 
to swell their gains. It is possible that 
by this time more than one-half — per- 
haps more than three-quarters — of the 
