222 Birds Every Child Should Know 
sticks, sod, cornstalks, pine twigs, weeds, bones, 
and other coarse rubbish, until, after annual 
repairs for several seasons, the broad, fiat nest 
may grow to be almost as high as it is wide and 
look something like a New York sky-scraper. 
Both parents sit on the eggs in turn and devote 
themselves with zeal to feeding the eaglets. 
These spoiled children remain in the nest 
several months without attempting to fly, 
expecting to be waited upon even after they are 
actually larger than the old birds. The cast- 
ings of skins, bones, hair, scales, etc., in the 
vicinity of a hawk’s or eagle’s nest, will indicate, 
almost as well as Dr. Fisher’s analysis, what 
food the babies had in their stomachs to make 
them grow so big. Immature birds are almost 
black all over. Not until they are three years 
old do the feathers on their heads and necks 
turn white, giving them the effect of being bald. 
Any eagle seen in the eastern United States is 
sure to be of this species. 
In the West and throughout Asia and Africa 
lives the golden eagle, of which Tennyson wrote 
the lines that apply equally well to our East- 
ern “bird of freedom”: 
“He clasps the crag with crooked hands; 
Close to the sun in lonely lands, 
Ringed with the azure world he stands. 
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls: 
He watches from his mountain walls, 
And, like a thunderbolt, he falls.” 
