upper ridge broad and rather flattened. Edges of the maxilla slightly prominent
behind the commencement of the hook. Nostrils large, transverse, and
of a lunate shape. Wings ample ; the fourth quill-feather the longest. Legs
having the tarsi half-feathered ; the front of the naked part scutellated, and the
sides °and back reticulated. Toes divided to their origin ; the outer one versatile.
Claws strong and hooked, grooved beneath ; that of the hind toe larger
than that of the inner, which again exceeds that of the others.
As a British species the White-tailed, Cinereous or Sea-
Eagle, is much more abundant than the Golden Eagle, and
011 some parts of the coast of these islands is not of rare
occurrence. I t chiefly frequents the neighbourhood of the
sea, whether the shore be low and bordered by sand-hills, or
by high and rocky cliffs. In either case it keeps a look-out
from some elevation, and is equally ready to seize ground-
game, fowl, or fish. Carrion and offal also are very attractive
to it, but this taste does not hinder it from evincing a partiality
for fawns, as its habit of resorting to deer-parks and
forests shows. I t has been taken in most districts of England,
and even very near London, though less frequently in the midland
than in the maritime counties. On the east and south-east
coast, though not numerous, it may be regarded as a regular
autumn and winter visitant; not that it confines itself to the
sea-board, but haunts also the larger waters and the extensive
rabbit-warrens of the interior. Messrs. Gurney and
Fisher, in the ‘ Zoologist’ for 1846, observe that “ when
they appear on the coast, the birds of this species are constantly
followed and mobbed by flocks of Gulls, and that
when they come inland they are similarly accompanied by
Rooks.” These visitants are almost invariably in immature
plumage, and Mr. Stevenson, in his excellent ‘ Birds of
Norfolk,’ says that in no instance has he known the adult to
occur in that county, where Sir Thomas Browne, writing
two hundred years ago, speaks of the not unusual appearance
of the “ halycetus, or fen eagles.” Indeed, in former
times, this species must have been far more abundant in
England than at present, for there is good reason for believing
that it bred in many stations around the kingdom. To
it, probably, belonged the Eaglet which, in Warner’s ‘ Isle
of AViglit,’ is said to have been taken from the Culver Cliff
so lately as 1780, as well as the nest which Dr. Moore mentions
as having formerly existed on Dewerstone Rock, near
Dartmoor. Willughby speaks of an eyry, certainly a Sea-
Eagle’s, in AVhinfield Park, Westmoreland, and in 1692
Aubrey was told that Eagles “ do breed in the parish of
Brampton,” in the same county. Dr. Heysham, in Hutchinson’s
‘ Cumberland,’ published in 1794, says that in his
day this species bred almost every year near Keswick and
Ullswater, and in that district, in July, 1835, Mr. Thompson
says he saw two Eagles on the same day. Mr. A. G.
More, whose elaborate papers (in ‘ The Ibis ’ for 1865), on
the “ Distribution of Birds in Great Britain,” are full of
original information on that interesting subject, learnt from
Mr. Crellin that a pair of Eagles used to breed in the high
cliffs of the Isle of Man until about fifty years previously,
when they were destroyed in a snow-storm.
In the South of Scotland the Sea-Eagle used to breed in
Dumfriesshire and East Galloway, on Ailsa Crag in the west,
and on the Bass Rock in the east, but it seems now to be
quite extirpated from those localities, though still found
breeding in the Highlands and Islands, its eyry being commonly
placed in the high cliffs of the coast; but when it
establishes itself inland, it is generally upon a rock or
island in the middle of a lake. “ Here it builds,” says
Wolley, “ upon the ground or in a tree, a nest whose construction
does not at all differ from that of the Golden Eagle,
there being always in it a certain amount of Luzula sylvatica.
The tree need by no means be a large one : I have seen two
nests of different years, in separate islands in one loch, each
only about four feet from the ground, in very small trees.”
This accurate observer adds, from his own experience in the
Highlands, Orkneys and Slietlands, a great number of
further particulars respecting the many nests that came
under his notice, which may be found at length in the
‘ Ootheca Wolleyana,’ but cannot be conveniently quoted
here. Mr. Robert Gray also, in his ‘Birds of the West of
Scotland,’ gives many more interesting details of numerous
eyries in the Hebrides, as well as on the mainland, carefully