178 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
General Habits. The sight of either a Golden Eagle or its nest 
is an event, for it is a royal bird of the mountains, building its nest on 
precipitous cliffs or on the walls of remote canyons. On our way down 
Hondo Canyon in the laos Mountains, on August 10, 1904, we saw two 
Golden Eagles sailing over the slope of the canyon, back and forth, almost 
without a wing-beat, merely tilting their wings at different angles as 
they crossed and recrossed, rose and fell. One of them, at least, in 
turning showed a white base to the tail. After hunting soberly for some 
time, occasionally lighting for a moment’s rest on a tree'top or a cliff, 
they coyly approached each other in the air but on the instant one flew 
off and the other swept out and up in the arc of a circle and then with a 
quick turn came darting down with set arrow-like wings. The per¬ 
formance had the air of coquettish courtship play, and the swoop up and 
dash down suggested the nighthawk’s aerial feats. The next sight took 
us still more by surprise. Both birds lit on a niche of the cliff and their 
heads showed above a huge nest! As we watched, they pitched off into 
the air and resumed their sailing. One of them soon lit on the dead 
branch of a tall tree a second, then gave a backward flap and jerk and 
flew, with the branch bristling out behind its feet, back to the nest. As 
this was on the tenth of August, it was a trifle unexpected (1905a, pp. 
39-40). 
An old nest found at 5,000 feet on the cliffs near Cuervo was three 
or four feet high and contained several bushels of sticks, at least three 
nests being piled one above the other. At the foot of the cliff below 
was an assortment of whitened bones. Jack-rabbit jaws and thigh 
bones, as Mr. Bailey found, predominated, but there were also jaws and 
skulls of cotton-tails, prairie dogs, and pocket gophers, and a fragment 
of land turtle’s shell, with numerous pellets of rabbit’s fur. 
When a jack rabbit is out on the open prairie, Ernest Thompson 
Seton says, the eagle can get him with something like certainty; but 
when under a bush, no matter how small, he is safe; for the eagle will 
not swoop at the rabbit. The fear of cactus and bayonet is ever on these 
biids. I he eagles, Mr. Seton says, “do much damage to the pelts of 
coyotes that have been killed by poison, so are not in favor with the 
hunteis , but he adds, “no one considers them a menace to calves or to 
sheep under guard” (MS). 
Though the eagles kill some grouse, as Mr. Seton Gordon wrote, 
some good sportsmen think a heavy bag is not everything in life and 
are willing to allow the eagle to remain, as he adds a great charm to 
the hills,” and Dr. Witmer Stone comments, “Let us hope that this 
view may be more widely held by sportsmen in America before all of our 
splendid birds of prey are exterminated because they claim an inherent 
right to share the game with the sportsmen” (1927, p. 578). 
