NISSER, or GOLDEN EAGLE.
I have ventured from his colour to call this bird the Golden Eagle, by way of distinction, as its Ethiopic name, Nisser, is only a generic one, and imports no more than the English name, Eagle. He is called by the vulgar Abou Duch’n, or Father Long Beard, which we may imagine was given him from the tuft of hair he has below his beak.
I suppose him to be not only the largest of the eagle kind, but surely one of the largest birds that flies. From wing to wing he was 8 feet 4 inches. From the tip of his tail to the point of his beak when dead, 4 feet 7 inches. He weighed 22 pounds, was very full of flesh. He seemed remarkably short in the legs, being only four inches from the joining of the foot to where the leg joins the thigh, and from the joint of the thigh to the joining of his body 6 inches. The thickness of his thigh was little less than 4 inches; it was extremely muscular, and covered with flesh. His middle claw was about 2 inches and a half long, not very sharp at the point, but extremely strong. From the root of the bill, to the point, was 3 inches and a quarter, and one inch and three quarters in breadth at the root. A forked brush of strong hair, divided at the point into two, proceeded from the cavity of his lower jaw at the beginning of his throat. He had the smallest eye I ever remember to have seen in a large bird, the aperture being scarcely half an inch. The crown of his head was bare or bald, so was the front where the bill and scull joined.
This noble bird was not an object of any chace or pursuit, nor stood in need of any stratagem to bring him within our reach. Upon the highest top of the mountain Lamalmon, while my servants were refreshing themselves from that toilsome rugged ascent, and enjoying the pleasure of a most delightful climate, eating their dinner in the outer air with several large dishes of boiled goats flesh before them, this enemy, as he turned out to be to them, appeared suddenly; he did not stoop rapidly from a height, but came flying slowly along the ground, and sat down close to the meat within the ring the men had made round it. A great shout, or rather cry of distress, called me to the place. I saw the eagle stand for a minute as if to recollect himself, while the servants ran for their lances and shields. I walked up as nearly to him as I had time to do. His attention was fully fixed upon the flesh. I saw him put his foot into the pan where was a large piece in water prepared for boiling, but finding the smart which he had not expected, he withdrew it, and forsook the piece which he held.
There were two large pieces, a leg and a shoulder, lying upon a wooden platter, into these he trussed both his claws, and carried them off, but I thought he looked wistfully at the large piece which remained in the warm water. Away he went slowly along the ground as he had come. The face of the cliff over which criminals are thrown took him from our sight. The Mahometans that drove the asses, who had, as we have already observed in the course of the journey, suffered from the hyæna, were much alarmed, and assured me of his return. My servants, on the other hand, very unwillingly expected him, and thought he had already more than his share.
As I had myself a desire of more intimate acquaintance with him, I loaded a rifle-gun with ball, and sat down close to the platter by the meat. It was not many minutes before he came, and a prodigious shout was raised by my attendants, He is coming, he is coming, enough to have discouraged a less courageous animal. Whether he was not quite so hungry as at the first visit, or suspected something from my appearance, I know not, but he made a small turn, and sat down about ten yards from me, the pan with the meat being between me and him. As the field was clear before me, and I did not know but his next move might bring him opposite to some of my people, and so that he might actually get the rest of the meat and make off, I shot him with the ball through the middle of his body about two inches below the wing, so that he lay down upon the grass without a single flutter. Upon laying hold of his monstrous carcase, I was not a little surprised at seeing my hands covered and tinged with yellow powder or dust. Upon turning him upon his belly, and examining the feathers of his back, they produced a brown dust, the colour of the feathers there. This dust was not in small quantities, for, upon striking his breast, the yellow powder flew in fully greater quantity than from a hair-dresser’s powderpuff. The feathers of the belly and breast, which were of a gold colour, did not appear to have any thing extraordinary in their formation, but the large feathers in the shoulder and wings seemed apparently to be fine tubes, which upon pressure scattered this dust upon the finer part of the feather, but this was brown, the colour of the feathers of the back. Upon the side of the wing, the ribs, or hard part of the feather, seemed to be bare as if worn, or, I rather think, were renewing themselves, having before failed in their function.
What is the reason of this extraordinary provision of nature is not in my power to determine. As it is an unusual one, it is probably meant for a defence against the climate in favour of those birds which live in those almost inaccessible heights of a country, doomed, even in its lower parts, to several months of excessive rain. The pigeons we saw upon Lamalmon, had not this dust in their feathers, nor had the quails; from which I guess these to be strangers, or birds of passage, that had no need of this provision, created for the wants of the indigenous, such as this eagle is, for he is unknown in the low country. That same day I shot a heron, in nothing different from ours, only that he was smaller, who had upon his breast and back a blue powder, in full as great quantity as that of the eagle.
Nisser Tokoor.
London Publish’d De.r 1.st 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.