J. Cassidy—Australian Bird-Beauties



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slender wedge-shaped tail this lovely bird presents a far more elegant

contour than does the Golden Eagle.


Unlike India, Australia has no Vultures for the excellent reason

that she has no carcases of quadrupeds of huge size to clear away.

Professor Gould examined and described an example of the Wedge¬

tailed Eagle, which weighed 9 lb. and measured 6 ft. 8 in. from

tip to tip of the opposite pinions. This was not by any means a

large-sized specimen ; if anything it may well have been a little under

the usual dimensions. The bird soars to a great height and performs

the most graceful evolutions and circles in the air. Its acute vision

enables it while thus soaring and circling to descry the retreats of its

future victims—the smaller species of kangaroo, dotted about the hills

and the plains inland. Nor is it content with small animals only.

It does not hesitate to swoop down and exert its powerful grasp on a

bird twice its own size—the Bustard.


Thirty or forty Eagles have been seen assembled together indulging

their appetites by gorging on a dead bullock. The Eagle prefers living

prey but as we have shown does not altogether refuse the carcases of

animals which are sometimes in a putrid condition. Its courage, power,

and rapacity are remarkable.


Nests .—The bird builds its nest on the highest trees ; none but

the aborigines being able to obtain them. The trees selected frequently

rise to a height of 100 feet before giving ofi a single branch. The nests

are very large, almost flat, and put together of sticks and small

boughs.


Eggs .—-The eggs are about 3 inches long by 2| broad, of stone-

colour, with large purple blotches and smaller blotches of “ yellowish-

umber-brown The young birds suggest the colouring of fawn,

rusty red, and black.


Stock-owners and the shepherds they employ eagerly shoot the birds

whenever possible, to save their sheep and lambs, but in spite of

rewards offered the Wedge-tailed Eagle is scarcely likely to be

altogether exterminated while the vast and dense Australian forests

remain unpenetrated.


The next bird which we shall consider is the remarkable Queen

Victoria Lyre-bird, of the Order Insessores.



