The Golden Eagle makes a flattened platform nest, or
rather a collection of strong sticks, on the high and most
inaccessible part of rocks, and requiring a space of several
feet square of surface. The female bird, which is considerably
larger than the male, lays two, and sometimes three
eggs, towards the end of the month of March or the beginning
of April. I f the eggs are removed, it is said that the
bird does not lay any more that season. The egg is about
three inches long by two inches and five lines broad, of a
dirty white colour, slightly mottled nearly all over with pale
reddish brown. An egg of this bird in the collection at the
British Museum is so marked; and a representation of the
egg, in the excellent work of my friend Mr. W . C. Hewitson
on the Eggs of British Birds, is very correctly drawn and
coloured. Incubation with the Golden Eagle, according to
Mr. Mudie, lasts thirty days, and the young Eaglets are at
first covered with greyish white down. They are watched,
defended, and plentifully supplied with food by the parent
birds. Smith, in his History of Kerry, relates that a poor
man in that county got a comfortable subsistence for his
family during a summer of famine out of an Eagle’s nest,
by robbing the Eaglets of the food the old ones brought,
whose attendance he protracted beyond the natural time by
clipping the wings, and thus retarding the flight of the
young birds.
Eagles are said to be very long-lived; one that died at
Vienna was stated to have lived in confinement one hundred
and four years. Their voice is sharp and loud, consisting
generally of two notes, repeated many times in succession.
Two birds of this species kept by Mr. Selby “ appeared
untameable in disposition, their fierceness remaining undiminished
through years of confinement. They did not exhibit
any partiality even for the person who constantly
attended and fed them, but were as ready to attack him as a
stranger.
In the menagerie at the Gardens of the Zoological Society
there are two Golden Eagles, and four White-tailed
Eagles ; but the keepers find the Golden Eagles the most
tractable of the two species.
“ Captain Green, of Buckden in Huntingdonshire, has
now in his possession a splendid specimen of the Golden
Eagle, which he has himself trained to take hares and rabbits.”—
Naturalist fo r May 1887.
The whole length of an adult male Golden Eagle is nearly
three fe e t; the adult female is still larger. The beak is
bluish horn colour, darkest at the tip ; the cere yellow; the
skin of the lore tinged with blue ; the irides hazel, the pupils
black ; the feathers on the top of the head and back of the
neck pointed in shape, and rufous brown: the general colour
of the plumage of the body dark brown, the chin and throat
particularly so ; the wing primaries nearly black, the secondaries
brownish black ; the wing-coverts reddish brown, varied
with dark brown : the feathers of the belly and thighs bay ;
those of the tail varied with two shades of brown, the ends
dark : the legs covered with bay feathers ; the toes yellow
and reticulated, except the last or distal joint of each toe,
which is covered with three broad scales; the claws are
black, the outer claw of each foot the smallest of the four.
' In a younger specimen of the Golden Eagle with the basal
or proximal half of the tail white, the feathers on the back
of the neck were less rufous, and the general colour of the
plumage on the body and wings more uniform, and darker.
In this state it is the Ring-tailed Eagle of authors. White
varieties of the Golden Eagle have been seen and recorded.
The foot of the Golden Eagle is so distinctly marked
from that of the White-tailed, or Cinereous Eagle, as to