THE GOLDEN EAGLE. (Aquila chrysaëtos.)
“But who the various nations can declare,
That plough with busy wing the peopled air?
These cleave the crumbling bark for insect food,
Those dip the crooked beak in kindred blood:
Some haunt the rushy moor, the lonely woods;
Some bathe their silver plumage in the floods;
Some fly to man, his household gods implore,
And gather round his hospitable door,
Wait the known call, and find protection there
From all the lesser tyrants of the air.
The tawny Eagle seats his callow brood
High on the cliff, and feasts his young with blood.”
Barbauld.
The Golden Eagle is one of the largest and most powerful of all those birds that have received the name of Eagle. It weighs above twelve pounds. Its length, from the point of the beak to the end of the tail, is about three feet; the breadth, when the wings are extended, is seven or eight feet. The beak is horny, crooked, and very strong. The feathers of the neck are of a rusty colour, and the rest dark brown. The feet are feathered down to the claws, which have a wonderful grasp; the toes are yellow, and the four talons are crooked and strong. As in all birds of prey, the female is the larger, and more powerful.
Eagles are remarkable for their longevity, and their faculty of sustaining a long abstinence from food. Of all birds the Eagle flies highest; and from thence the ancients have given it the epithet of the Bird of Heaven:
“Bird of the broad and sweeping wing,
Thy home is high in heaven,
Where wide the storms their banners fling,
And the tempest’s clouds are driven.
Thy throne is on the mountain top,
Thy fields the boundless air;
And hoary peaks, that proudly prop
The skies, thy dwellings are.”