Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/44

 taining two eggs. These birds were accused of committing great devastation, "killing a sheep every week," and very often sweeping down and bearing off a goose from the farm-yard. One of the finest sea eagles which has come under my own observation, was shot in that neighbourhood, (near Dundrum,) on the 13th of January, 1845, when in the act of pursuing the fowls in a farmer's yard. This bird was preserved for the late Marquis of Downshire, who kindly supplied me with all the information respecting it. "It weighed 10½ lbs., measured three feet from the point of the beak to the end of the tail, and seven feet four inches from tip to tip of the wings."

When in June, 1834, at Achil Head (Mayo), which is fondly, but erroneously, believed by the inhabitants of the island, to ap- proximate the shores of the western world more nearly than any other European land, and stretching out afar into the Atlantic, is rendered sublime, less from altitude than from the utter barren- ness of its desolate and inaccessible cliffs, a suitable accompani- ment to the scene appeared in a sea eagle, which rose startled from her nest on the ledge of an adjoining precipice. Mr. R. Ball, my companion on the occasion, thus referred to this eagle in a lecture delivered before the Zoological Society, in Dublin : — "One of the most striking and valuable results of practical ornithology, is the extraordinary manner in which the scenery where a bird is first observed becomes impressed on the memory. I can see in my mind's eye the whole scene, when peering over a precipice at Achil Head, a sea eagle started from the rocks below, and ascended in spirals to a great height above Saddle Head, which towered over us. It was sunset of a summer evening. We were weary, hungry, foiled in the object which led us to the Head, and many miles from the place where we were to get food and rest. Yet the sight of this bird in its native wilds at once refreshed us, and I at least felt inspirited and repaid for a day of great fatigue. I could then enjoy the beauty of the scene, the boldness of the rocks, the vastness of the great western ocean, dashing its waves in broken foam from the American coasts. The scathed majestic Saddle Head, the setting sun, the wild grandeur