THE BALD EAGLE 
By T. GILBERT PEARSON 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 82 
It is a real event to see a Bald Eagle wild in its native haunts. It is 
so large, so majestic, and flies with an evidence of so enormous strength, 
that one is impressed with the thought that here is the King of Birds. 
On one occasion, while eating my lunch 
in the shade of a little bush on a south- 
ern prairie, I saw one carry off a lamb. 
The noise of some running sheep, not 
far away, caused me to look up just as 
the eagle rose from the ground with its 
prey. It did not once pause and flutter 
its wings, as birds-of-prey sometimes 
do, in order to get a better hold of its 
burden, for it seemed to have seized the 
lamb securely when it first made its 
downward plunge. The bird flew with 
truly surprising swiftness, and bore 
the weight of its “kill” without appar- 
ent effort. I watched it for half a mile 
or more until it disappeared in the 
forest, and not once did it show any 
indication of weariness. Years later I 
read an account written by a bird- 
student who watched an eagle alight 
on the beach after having carried a 
lamb weighing more than the bird itself 
for a distance of five miles across a body 
of water. It is hard to believe that a 
bird may be strong enough to accom- 
plish such a task as that. 
Bald Eagles catch many of the larger water-birds, especially wounded 
ducks. On the lakes and sounds where much hunting is carried on in 
winter many hundreds of crippled wildfowl are left behind when the flocks 
migrate northward in spring. These fall an easy prey to the eagles that 
usually frequent such regions. Once I saw one capture a broken-winged 
Coot in Currituck Sound, North Carolina. At the approach of its big- 
enemy the Coot dived, but soon had to come up to breathe, when the 
eagle instantly swooped. Again and again the helpless bird dived and 
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