THE WHITE-HEADED, OR BALD EAGLE.
(Haliaëtus leucocephalus.)
This bird is about three feet long, and seven feet broad, measuring to the tips of the extended wings. The bill resembles that of the golden eagle, and from the chin hang some small hairy feathers like a beard. As it is found alike in the frigid and the torrid zone, it is provided for enduring rapid changes of temperature, and its whole body is clothed under the feathers with a kind of down, white and soft like that of the swan. This bird builds its nest on lofty cliffs by the sea-shore, and on the banks of rivers or lakes, and feeds almost entirely upon fish.
It is generally regarded by the Anglo-Americans with peculiar respect, as the chosen emblem of their native land. The great cataract of Niagara is mentioned as one of its favourite places of resort, not merely as a fishing station, where it is enabled to satiate its hunger upon its most congenial food, but also in consequence of the vast quantity of four-footed beasts, which, unwarily venturing into the stream above, are borne away by the torrent, and precipitated down those tremendous falls:
“High o’er the watery uproar silent seen,
Sailing sedate in majesty serene,
Now ’midst the pillar’d spray sublimely lost,
And now emerging, down the rapids toss’d,
Glides the Bald Eagle, gazing calm and slow
O’er all the horrors of the scene below;
Intent alone to sate himself with blood,
From the torn victim of the raging flood.”
The number of birds of prey of various kinds which assemble at the foot of the rocks to glut themselves upon the banquet thus provided for them, is said to be incredibly great, but they are all compelled to give place to the Eagle when he deigns to feed on dead animals; and the crow and the vulture submit without a struggle to the exercise of that tyranny, which they know it would be in vain to resist. “We have ourselves,” says Wilson, “seen the Bald Eagle, while seated on the dead carcase of a horse, keep a whole flock of vultures at a respectful distance, until he had fully sated his own appetite:” and he adds another instance, in which many thousands of tree squirrels having been drowned, in one of their migrations, in attempting to pass the Ohio, and having furnished for some length of time a rich banquet to the vultures, the sudden appearance among them of the Bald Eagle at once put a stop to their festivities, and drove them to a distance from their prey, of which the Eagle kept sole possession for several successive days.
These Eagles sometimes hunt in pairs in a manner which shows their great sagacity. Aware that water-fowl have the power of eluding their grasp by diving, they hover at a distance from each other over their prey. One of them then darts towards it with great swiftness, but the water-fowl easily avoids the first attack by diving. The pursuer then rises into the air, and his mate resumes the attack just as the fowl is emerging to breathe, and compels it to plunge again. The Eagles continue alternately to proceed in this manner till their victim is so exhausted that it falls an easy prey.
This Eagle also frequently attacks the Osprey or Fish Hawk, when he is returning from a successful excursion loaded with a large fish, and compels him to drop his prey; the Eagle then descends with wonderful rapidity, and generally succeeds in seizing the fish before it reaches the water.
