15 
WHITE-TAILED EAGLE. 
RAPTORES. 
FA LC0N1DM. 
WHITE-TAILED EAGLE. 
SEA-EAGLE. 
Aquila ALBICILLA. 
PLATE IV. PIG. II. 
Those who have been in the habit of imagining for 
themselves a suitable habitation for the eyrie of the king 
of birds, and associating the name of eagle with the 
cloud-capped mountain-top, the inaccessible precipice, 
or the dark ravine, will have their dreams dissipated and 
be greatly disappointed, when they find, by the long and 
interesting aoccunt of the habits of the White-tailed 
Eagle with which I have been kindly favoured by Mr. 
Wolley, that it is content at times to make its nest upon 
the ground. 
“ The Sea-Eagle generally makes its nest in the high 
cliffs of the coast, where it lives upon fish, guillemots, 
young herring gulls, &c., but is also occasionally found 
breeding inland. In the former situation an eyrie, which 
I visited two years in succession, and from which I took 
the egg which Mr. Hewitson figures, had nothing but a 
very little heather, grass, and moss used in its construc¬ 
tion. Two other nests which were carefully described 
to me were made principally of sea-weed, and were in 
such “ tremendous cliffs” that my informant’s “hair gets 
strong” when he thinks of them. In the Shetlands an 
inaccessible eyrie was pointed out to me on the extreme 
