WEDGE-TAILED EAGLE (EAGLE-HAWK). 
the nape feathers ; in the young the darker coloration is still more apparent 
in aU stages. Gracefield, West Australia.” 
Black specimens are recorded from the EasL but when noted it is always 
connected with old age and commented upon. Western birds show blackness 
in their immaturity, and are thus easily separable. I had conservatively been 
inclined to temporarily sink this Western form, but I note that Milligan, in a 
note hereafter quoted, observed this iron-black plumage, and concluded it 
was due to age, but Keartland, whose record I also add, definitely indicates 
the absence of the light colour in the west. I therefore conclude two valid 
subspecies are at present recognisable, as admitted in my “ List,” p. 105, but I 
suggest reconsideration of the ranges there given and probable admission of 
more subspecific forms. The succeeding notes refer to the Western race. 
Mr. Tom Carter has written me : “ The Wedge-tailed Eagle (aboriginal 
name, Warree-da) occurs throughout the State. At Point Cloates they 
were not very common, probably because there was no timber near, but a 
few pairs bred in the rugged range that commences at Point Cloates and ends 
at Vlaming Head (near the North-west Cape), a length of nearly 80 miles. 
They were very plentiful in the lower Gascoyne River, in 1887, when I was 
on a lambing camp. One morning I poisoned fifteen from the carcass of a 
sheep. This was on Boolathanna Station, and Mr. Chas. Brockman, the 
pioneer of that country, told me that in the year 1880 ‘ Eagle-Hawks ’ were 
there in immense numbers, and that he coimted more than 500 in one flock. 
He himself shot 40 in one day, as they made great havoc among his ewes and 
lambs. When a Wedge-tailed Eagle has finished eating a lamb, it leaves 
the skin neatly tmned inside out. They are early breeders in the North-west, 
laying very regularly about the end of May. The nest is placed high up in a 
tree, if one is conveniently situated ; but on the vast salt-marsh coimtry on 
the coast, north of the Gascoyne River, I have seen nests built a few feet from 
the groimd on the top of a spreading bush. One egg is the usual clutch, but 
occasionally two. June 2, 1887. Nest with two eggs on Gascoyne River. 
On May 22, 1900, I found a nest with one egg in a gorge in the Point (illoates 
range. The nest was on a wide ledge on the face of a cliff, and walking to 
the edge of the cliff, I fired both barrels at the old bird as it left the nest a 
few feet below me, but with no apparent effect. On the edge of the nest 
was laid a dead cat, freshly killed {i.e. domestic cat in wild state). On 
May 28 I visited the nest again, and again fired at the bird as it came off and 
took a second egg. On June 4 I took a third egg from the same nest, so these 
birds are not easily scared away. On June 30, in the same year, I took an 
egg from another nest built in a similar position, in the same range, about a 
mile from the first nest. I fancy it was built by the same pair of birds, 
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