Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/52

 though any food given in the ordinary manner, he would not per- mit to be removed.

These eagles occasionally broke loose, and flew about the place, but eventually, after having made several circuits in the air, they would alight near the pond at which they were kept, and allow their master to lay hold of, and place them again in captivity. After one of these birds had been kept about two, and the other four and a half years, they were lost by flying to a distance, where they were shot. The latter exhibited the white tail which denotes maturity, early in October, 1836, being then four years and a half old : it proved a male bird on dissection, and weighed 11 lbs.

A few words may be given on eagles, as observed in Scotland and England. My friend, the owner of the birds just noticed, informed me, after returning from the very extensive and moun- tainous shooting quarters of Aberarder and Dunmaglass, in the north of Inverness-shire, in 1838, that during his three months' stay there, no eagles were seen. But on the 28th of September, when a few miles distant from that locality, he observed four old birds in company (all displaying white tails), soaring above a mountain northward of Loch Ness. In the autumn of the fol- lowing year, this species was first seen by him at Aberarder, and when there myself during the month of September, 1842, I saw one on wing near the house ; its tail was conspicuously white, as was that of the other individual. It is singular that all these birds should have been adult, for at the time of their occurrence, the young birds of the year are leaving the eyries and "regions round about" to the sway of their respective parents. Old birds seem also to be given to wandering at this period of the year. The following note, together with that on the Bald Eagle, was contributed by me to Charlesworth's Magazine of Natural History in 1838 (vol. 2, p. 164).

Golden and Sea Eagle, Aquila Chrysaëtos and A. albicilla. — In the more recent works on British ornithology, there is not any notice of eyries, either of the golden or sea eagle, in England at the present time ; but, from my having seen two birds of one or other of these species, (though not sufficiently near to be speci-