Those nests that I had opportunities of observing were placed on the most inaccessible trees, and were of a very large size, nearly flat, and built of sticks and boughs. The eggs, I regret to say, I could never procure, although I have shot the birds from their aerie, in which there were eggs, but which it was quite impossible to obtain; no one but the aborigines, of which none remain in Van Diemen’s Land, being capable of ascending such trees, many of which rise to more than a hundred feet before giving off a branch.
The adults have the head, throat, and all the upper and under surface blackish brown, stained on the edges and extremities of many of the feathers, particularly the wing and upper tail-coverts with pale brown; back and sides of the neck rusty-red; irides hazel; cere and space round the eye yellowish white; bill yellowish horn-colour, passing into black at the tip; feet light yellow.
The young have the head and back of the neck deep fawn-colour, striated with lighter; all the feathers of the upper surface largely tipped and stained with fawn and rusty-red; tail indistinctly barred near the extremity; throat and breast blackish brown, each feather largely tipped with rufous; the abdomen blackish brown.
The figure is about one-third of the natural size.
AQUILA MORPHNOÏDES: Gould
J. Gould and H. C. Richter, delt C. Hullmandel Imp.
AQUILA MORPHNOÏDES, Gould.
Little Australian Eagle.
Aquila Morphnoïdes, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., Part VIII. p. 161.
I shall perhaps better convey an idea of the rarity of this small but true species of Aquila, by stating that the specimen from which the accompanying drawing was made, and which forms part of my own collection, is the only one I have ever seen either living or dead. It is the second species of the genus known to inhabit Australia, and it is singular that while the Wedge-tailed Eagle is so common, the present species should be so rare, or, perhaps, so restricted in its range of habitat. This Eagle is as clearly an analogue of the Aquila pennata of Europe, as the Wedge-tailed Eagle is of the Golden. Its specific distinctions from Aq. pennata are its large size, the total absence of the white mark on the shoulder, and the cere and feet being of a lead-colour instead of yellowish-olive.
The part of Australia where I shot the specimen above alluded to, was Yarrundi on the River Hunter, on a portion of Mr. Coxen’s estate near Tooloogan. I was led to the discovery of the bird by finding its nest containing a single egg, upon which it had been sitting for some time. I regret to add, that although I several times visited the nest after killing the bird, all my attempts at procuring the other sex were entirely unsuccessful. The nest was of a large size and was placed close to the hole, about one-fourth of the height from the top of one of the highest gum-trees; the egg was bluish white with very faint traces of brown blotchings, two inches and two lines long by one inch and nine lines broad.