CHAPTER XVI.
EXPERIENCES WITH EAGLES.
I.—Forest and Plain.
With her vast expanses of sierra and lonely scrub-clad wastes, scarcely inhabited save by ill-tended herds of cattle or goats, but abounding in wild-life—furred, feathered, and scaled—Spain affords conditions peculiarly favourable to raptorial animals. Of the eagle-tribe some eight or nine species are recognized as belonging to the Spanish avi-fauna—some peculiar to the mountain-region, others to the steppe and prairie, as we now proceed to explain. We have ourselves shot all the different kinds of eagle, save two, which are comparatively scarce and irregular stragglers to the Peninsula—namely, Haliæetus albicilla and Aq. nævia.
The first of the tribe to attract our attention was the Spanish Imperial Eagle (Aquila adalberti of R. Brehm), one of the handsomest of European species, a few pairs of which still inhabit most of the wilder provinces of Central and Southern Spain, though their numbers in Andalucia have been grievously reduced since we first met with them in 1872. To shoot this bird was long an ambition of the writer, the attainment of which cost many a long week of hard work, hard fare, and more than one bitter disappointment. All attempts in those earlier days to approach the Imperial Eagle on the open plains which form its favourite home proved futile; though on many occasions we fell in with the bird conspicuously perched, according to its habit during the mid-day heats, on some dead tree or the top of a pine. In later years we have succeeded in this feat, but at that time the most carefully executed "stalk" invariably failed for one reason or another; nor could the eagle be beguiled to come to a bait. Nothing remained but to take what is perhaps an unfair advantage. On April 16th we found a nest, a broad platform of branches built on the very summit of a towering alcornoque. Beneath this, in a hut of cistus-twigs, a prey to myriad mosquitoes, I awaited the eagle's return. Slowly passed some hours of torture before she re-appeared, took one wide circuit around, and descended with a rush like a whirlwind upon her eyry, completely disappearing from view within its ample circumference. This event I had not foreseen, and hoped to kill the eagle in the act of alighting. Now it only remained to put her off. Gently I removed my boots, crept from the hut, and walked round the tree—a mountain of green foliage. From no other point was the great nest visible; so I braced up my nerves and shouted. There followed a slight rustling; then the huge wings extended, and for a single instant I saw, through intervening foliage, the whole of the coveted symmetrical form, ere she wheeled back across the tree. A No. 1 cartridge crashed through the branches; a shower of leaves and black feathers floated in the air—instinctively I felt the blow must be mortal, though no vital spot had been presented. Intense was my joy when next she appeared, to see the eagle slanting downwards towards the earth. There she recovered an even keel; the second barrel, too careless perhaps, had no effect, and the great bird slowly flap—flapped away. Each moment I watched for her collapse, but she still held on, on, across the open, and behind some distant trees was lost to view. Then the iron entered my soul, nor was it any solace to hear, some time afterwards, that that very afternoon my eagle had been found by a couple of carabineros; not till a fortnight later was the useless corpse recovered.
It was the 6th of May before we found another nest in a distant dehesa—again built on an alcornoque (cork-oak), the highest of a clump bordering a small swamp. This eagle sat close, not moving till I stood ready beneath. Then she rose to her feet and I shot as she stood on the nest. She sprang buoyantly upwards, ignoring a second charge placed under the wing as she wheeled back: then soared blindly over Felipe, receiving two more cartridges, and after flying some half a mile slowly settled down to earth in a series of descending circles. Sending Felipe to recover her, I awaited the return of the male; but the sun was low on the horizon ere my eyes were gladdened by the sight of his majestic flight, directly approaching, and with a rabbit hanging from his claws. With quick "yapping" bark, he perched on an outer branch, and next moment fell, wing-broken, to the ground.
A magnificent pair they were: their sable-black plumage glossy with purplish iridescent sheen and with snow-white shoulders. On the occiput a patch of pale gold, the crown being black. The feet and cere of this species are pale lemon-yellow; the irides golden, finely reticulated with hazel.
This eyry contained two eaglets, clad in white down. We have since had many opportunities of observing the breeding habits of this species on the wooded plains of Andalucia and Estremadura. The eggs, usually three in number, are mostly white, more or less splashed or spotted with faint evanescent reddish or brown shades, and are laid about the middle of March. The nests of the Imperial Eagle are about four feet across, and invariably placed on the extreme summit of a tall tree—cork-oak or pine—all projecting twigs being broken off so as to offer no obstruction to the sitting bird's view. The nests are flat, lined with fresh twigs and green pine-needles, and all around and beneath lie strewn the skulls of hares and rabbits—a perfect Golgotha. We have also seen the remains of Partridge, Stone-Curlew, Mallard, and wildfowl, but never those of reptiles. These large nests are most difficult to get into; their position affording no hand-hold above, and from the extent to which they overhang, access can only be obtained by a manœuvre analogous to scaling the futtock-shrouds of an old line-of-battle ship.
The Imperial Eagle is exclusively confined to the plains—we have never seen it in the mountains: its prey consists almost entirely of rabbits and partridge: it is also said to kill bustards, but this we think improbable, though the bird, no doubt, is powerful enough. Its hunting-grounds are the arid, barren dehesas and cistus-wastes—it is not seen on the cornlands frequented by bustard. The adults are recognizable at a long distance by their black plumage and snow-white epaulets—majestic birds of massive, powerful appearance. One also sees on the plains other large and powerful eagles of a rich tawny-chestnut colour—very handsome objects as they sit in the sunshine on some lofty pine.
What all these large tawny eagles are is not quite clear; or rather, their precise specific status is not yet settled. Several experienced ornithologists scattered throughout the world—Hume, Brooks and Anderson in India, Cullen in Turkey, Saunders, Irby and Lord Lilford in Spain—have studied these birds, but hitherto the investigations of these accomplished naturalists have resulted in qualified, and sometimes clashing opinions. Extreme difficulties beset the study of the eagle-tribe, for the living subjects refuse to be studied, and resent one's most remote propinquity. To go out eagle-shooting is to court failure. Then, owing to their prolonged adolescence and slow changes of plumage, a single eagle may pass through several distinct phases, each more pronounced than those which divide species from species: added to which is the further fact that while the genus contains several well-defined types, yet its minor forms intergrade with perplexing persistency. Without venturing on any dogmatic opinions, we will relate, as a small contribution towards their natural history, such facts as have come under our notice during many years' observation of the Spanish eagles.