WHITE-BELLIED SEA-EAGLE. 
living moUusks and other lower marine animals. Its peculiar province is 
consequently the seashore, and it especially delights to take up its abode on 
the borders of smaU bays and inlets of the sea, and rivers as high as they 
are influenced by the tide ; nevertheless, it is to be met with, though more 
rarely, on the borders of lakes and inland streams, but never in the forests 
or sterile plains of the interior. As it is almost invariably seen in pairs, it 
would appear to be permanently mated, each pair inhabiting a particular 
bay or inlet, to the exclusion of others of the same species. Urdess disturbed 
or harassed, the White-bellied Sea-Eagle does not shun the abode of man, 
but becomes fearless and familiar. Among the numerous places in which I 
observed it in 1839 was the Cove of Sydney, where one or two were daily seen 
performing their aerial gyrations above the shipping and over the tops of 
houses ; if I mistake not, they were the same pair of birds that found a safe 
retreat in Elizabeth Bay, skirting the property of Alexander Macleay, Esq., 
where they might be frequently seen perched on the bare limb of a tree by 
the water’s edge forming an interesting and ornamental addition to the scene. 
In Tasmania it is especially abundant in D’Entrecasteaux Channel, and along 
the banks of the Derwent and the Tamar ; and there was scarcely one of the 
little islets in Bass’s Straits but was inhabited by a pair of these birds, which, 
in these cases, subsisted in a great measure on the Petrels and Penguins which 
resort there in great numbers to breed and which are very easily captured. 
. . . On a small island, of about forty acres in extent, opposite the settlement 
of Flinders, I shot a fully-fledged young bird, which was perched upon the 
cone of a rock ; and I then, for the first time, discovered my error in 
characterizing, in the ‘Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London’ and 
in my ‘ Synopsis,’ the bird in this state as a different species, under the name 
of Haliaeetus sphenurus, an error which I take this opportunity to correct. . . . 
This Sea-Eagle may be frequently seen floating about in the air above its 
hunting-ground, in circles, with the tips of its motionless wings turned 
upwards : the great breadth and roundness of the pinions, and the shc^rtness 
of the neck and tail, giving it no unapt resemblance to a large butterfly. . . . 
Wkether as a result of the progress of civilization and the destructive band 
of man this fine bird has been extirpated from the precincts of the great 
city of Sydney and similarly populous places is for the present race of 
Australians to say. In all probability, this to a certain extent has been 
the case : still the bird will hold its own in other parts of the colony 
for a long time to come ; yet (and it is pitiable to contemplate such a 
contingency) a period will doubtless arrive when the bays and inlets of the 
southern coast of Australia will no longer be adorned by the presence of this 
elegant species.” 
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