V'A' 
June 24, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
977 
Home Life of a Golden Eagle. 
Of late years the camera has become so marked 
an aid in natural history study that the most 
beautiful illustrations no longer cause us sur¬ 
prise. Black and white halftones of photographs 
and even three color work, such as is seen in 
Mr. Chapman’s beautiful volume, “Camps and 
Cruises of an Ornithologist,” have come to be 
almost expected. 
A volume illustrated in a somewhat different 
way is the “Home Life of the Golden Eagle,” 
by H. B. MacPherson, which is illustrated by 
thirty-two halftones, mounted on heavy paper 
and bound in' the back of 
the book. This is not a 
large vo’ume, only forty- 
five pages, but it tells 
in extremely attractive 
fashion the story of two 
or three months of 
patient watching of the 
nest of a golden eagle 
in the Grampian Hills. 
It is published by 
Witherby & Co., of 
London. 
It was in April, 1909, 
that Mr. MacPherson 
learned that the bird 
was sitting on two eggs, 
and by the last of May 
he had seen and photo¬ 
graphed the eagle and 
had dug out for himse'f 
a shelter in the side of 
the rock ledge on which 
was the nest, building 
sheltering walls for con¬ 
cealment, and disguis¬ 
ing them with heather 
and moss so that the 
birds scarcely regarded 
the change in the land¬ 
scape. An opening gave 
entrance into this shelter on the side away from 
the nest, and there were peep holes through 
which the lenses of the camera projected. 
The story of the growth of the young eagle 
from the egg to the time when it spread its 
wings and finally left its nest, of the habits of 
the parent birds, of the way in which the young 
one occupied itself and the games it played, are 
extraordinarily interesting. To make these ob¬ 
servations, and to take these pictures required 
great patience with a readiness to suffer cold 
and wet, and all the many other minor hard¬ 
ships which are the lot of the field naturaHst. 
Here is the record of half a day as Mr. Mac¬ 
Pherson tells it: 
“With a rush of wings she came aeain, and 
this time deposited a grouse ready plucked on 
the ledge. It was now 3 p. m. and the eaglet 
was hungry, but she evidently considered that 
it was too ear'v for supper, and aeain deoarted. 
In less than five minutes the cock droooed in 
with another erouse, also plucked clean of feath¬ 
ers and headless, and as soon as he had de¬ 
parted, the hen returned with a third, and as 
quickiy vanished. This store of food had evi¬ 
dently been accumulated by them somewhere out¬ 
side the eyrie, and I subsequently discovered 
several places among the rocks where game had 
been plucked, for no bird is ever brought to the 
young without being stripped of its feathers. 
As we shall see later, hares are sometimes 
brought unplucked at another stage, but while 
the eaglets are still in the first down, both hares 
and rabbits are stripped of fur, but not skinned, 
before being brought to the eyrie. Other places 
were found later where the refuse from the 
nest was deposited, for during the first two 
MOTHER AND SON. 
The Home Life of the Golden Eagle. 
months the eyrie was kept remarkably clean. 
These 'middens' were not used for plucking, but 
were kept for their own purpose as storehouses 
for refuse. 
“The eaglet was now very excited and would 
not settle down again to sleep, searching the 
sky for his parents, his eyes rolling with antici¬ 
pation of the coming feast. At 3:45 the cock 
appeared with a fourth grouse and turned side- 
wise upon the ledge, standing upon the prey 
with both feet. Suddenly, with a terrific blow 
of his powerful claw, he ripped the bird open from 
breast to tail, and then again took his departure. 
“In a few minutes the female returned to the 
eyrie, and picked out the grouse which the cock 
had prepared, choosing it carefully from among 
the other carcasses. Seizing it in one foot, she 
shuffled forward toward the eaglet, and placed 
the prey in front of the expectant youngster 
with its legs sticking up into the air. The 
young one was now expecting to be fed, but 
she suddenly changed her mind and flew away 
once more. 
“In the evening, about 6 o’clock, the female 
eagle returned once more to feed her young, and 
I secured a picture of her in a characteristic atti¬ 
tude. The light was now failing and dark c'.ouds 
rolled up from the west, putting an end to all 
possibility of instantaneous work. The scene 
which followed was, however, well worth a long 
day’s patience, for the eagle picked out the pre¬ 
pared grouse again and carried it to the far side 
of the eyrie in her beak. Here, beyond reach 
of the young one, she gorged herself upon the 
entrails, coming forward at intervals to the 
eaglet with' a tidbit of liver or other dainty 
morsel, which he greedily pecked from her 
beak. When she herself was satisfied, she 
brought the prey nearer and proceeded to gorge 
the youngster till he settled down contented in 
the nest. She then seized the remains of the 
carcass in her beak and bore it away out of 
my sight. 
“A moment later, hav¬ 
ing disposed of the ref¬ 
use, she returned and 
again settled herself 
down beside the eaglet 
to shelter him for the 
night. As this position 
had been already photo¬ 
graphed, I slipped quiet¬ 
ly away without disturb¬ 
ing her, having slipped 
caps over the lenses to 
shield them from the 
rain.” 
The thirty-two plates 
which illustrate this book 
show the nest with its 
two eggs, the young 
eagle-—one of the two 
hatched died — in all 
stages of its growth, and 
the parent bird in a 
great variety of posi¬ 
tions. It is an exceed¬ 
ingly interesting piece of 
work, and, with a num¬ 
ber of similar pieces of 
work done in the United 
States and the old world, 
is very suggestive. De¬ 
tails like those fur¬ 
nished by such long continued, and often hour 
to hour, observations give us an intimate knowl¬ 
edge of the every day life of our birds, such as 
may not be had in any other way. 
To the Aleutian Islands. 
A. C. Bent, of Taunton, Mass., a fellow of 
the American Ornithologists’ Union, is organiz¬ 
ing an expedition to the A’eutian Islands for the 
purpose of making a biological survey of that 
chain. It is hoped that the use of a revenue 
cutter may be secured for this purpose, and it 
is possible that the United States National 
Museum and the Biological Survey may be rep¬ 
resented on the trip. 
The Aleutian Islands are of peculiar interest 
to sportsmen because of the great variety of 
forms of ptarmigan found on them. The ptar¬ 
migan of the various Alaskan Islands, once per¬ 
haps all quite alike, became separated when the 
is’ands were formed, and have become special¬ 
ized in a sreat variety of directions, so that now 
they are known by nearly a dozen different names. 
