THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
After some hard work we felled the tree, and when the dust was cleared away 
we found a young bird apparently about a week oldi, and fortunately alive. 
The heap of sticks and rubbish of which the nest was formed would have filled 
a large dray; in it were the remains of small wallabies^ “Wood Duck,” 
Straw-necked and White Ibises, and a White-fronted Heron. We remained 
in the vicinity another two days, but I only saw one of the parent birds once, 
and that was at a great height in the air. I took the Eaglet home with me 
to Lithgow, and we had no difficulty in rearing it, as it could eat butcher’s 
meat and small birds readily. When it reached maturity we built a large 
aviary of battens. For the first five years its head and neck-feathers were of 
a pale fawn colour : for a similar period they were rich rufous brown on these 
parts. After the next moult, and when ten years old, the entire plumage 
changed to a glossy black, and remained so ever afterwards. During its 
captivity it was answerable for the lives of a few domestic cats that used to 
go into its aviary after the meat or birds, but although it killed them it did 
not eat them. When eighteen years of age this Eagle met with its death in 
a tragic manner ; the yard of our house adjoined the Lithgow Ironworks, 
and the burning slag set fire to its aviary, and although my brother quickly 
rescued it at the time, it only lived a few hours, the shock killing it. On 
skinning and dissecting the bird it was found to be a male.’ This note gives 
the plumage-changes as they may take place, but whether the time can be 
utilised or not is quite uncertain ; at any rate it would confirm the suggestion 
that the black only comes with age on the east. From the west, young birds 
are more or less black, and almost certainly the whole black plumage is very 
rapidly acquired.” 
There are many other notes worth consideration in the same place, but 
all these cannot be reproduced here, and there are especially good accounts 
of its nesting habits and the eggs. 
Berney, of Queensland, in the Emu, Vol. III., p. 123, 1903, wrote: 
“ On the 5th June I found an Eagle’s {Uroaetus audax) nest containing two 
eggs, which the old bird was loath to leave. By the platform of the nest was 
the freshly-killed, headless body of a White-fronted Heron {Notophoyx novce- 
hollandice), from which the legs and wings had also been removed. It is 
probable that the male bird feeds its sitting mate during incubation. This 
is more likely, as, being winter-time, the eggs would not bear exposure for 
any lengthened time. This nest, I may state, is five days earlier than the 
earliest record in ‘ Nests and Eggs ’ (Campbell). The stomach of the Heron 
was crammed with grasshoppers. In the side of the Eagle’s nest two 
Chestnut-eared Finches {Taeniopygia castanotis) had built their own (a 
favourite resort of these Finches) and were busy feeding their family of four 
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