The Heart of the Wild: Nature Studies from Near and Far

by S. L. Bensusan

Doubtless the crows and other eaters of carrion would soon leave nothing of the carcase from which he had torn his meal.

Shortly after this day, a touch of mildness that seemed a forerunner of spring came to the Highlands, and the Golden Eagle took a sudden flight to the north-east. He passed beyond the limits of the land and the home of the sea eagles, and moved swiftly in the direction of the desolate island of Foula, beyond the larger group of the Shetlands. And on the following day he turned to the south again, but not alone, his new mate came with him, a beautiful creature, larger, heavier and even more fierce than he. She had come from Norway to Foula Island, and consented gladly enough to share his home in the wild hills of Sutherlandshire.

Through the slowly lengthening days of February the two eagles, while hunting independently, worked together to restore the nest on the rock. It was a very big and rough affair, six feet across at the base, built of sticks taken from the Scotch fir and the larch and the thick twigs of heather. Inside it was soft with grass and fern and mosses, and when it was complete the mother eagle laid three eggs, each three inches long and nearly as big round the broader end. They were purple, with red-brown blotches and streaks of yellow and black. It was March before the first egg was laid, and as the other two came at intervals of several days, the first nestling came before the other eggs were hatched. He was an ugly little fellow with big mouth, staring eyes, and grey down in place of feathers.

Then the other two nestlings made their appearance, and the fox, whose vixen had given him a litter of cubs, was more uneasy than ever. It was apparently impossible to satisfy the appetite of the eaglets. The father and mother birds thought less for the time being of their own wants than of the requirements of their babies. For miles round all the weaklings and cripples among the game birds were destroyed, and one afternoon the mother eagle came to the eyrie with a young lamb in her claws. She had snatched the new-born creature from the hill-side, and would have been delighted to feed regularly on lamb, but the shepherd had seen her, and when she paid her next visit to the hills on the following morning he was waiting with a shot-gun. Anxiety made him fire too soon, a handful of feathers came fluttering down, and the mother eagle received a couple of pellets in her side and several through the outer edge of the primaries of one wing. Thereafter she left the lambs alone. Her alarm was the greater because she had never heard a gun before, and the shock of the charge, though well-nigh spent before it reached her, was very severe.

“What fools these men are,” said the Golden Eagle angrily to the Red Fox some days after the accident to his mate, “they grudge us the food for our little ones. And yet if they had but the wit to understand, we serve their purposes as well as our own. The strong birds and beasts that are useful in the world can get away from us, the weak ones are taken. But if they were not taken they would soon spoil the race. Why, I have taken hundreds of crippled birds from these moors and valleys since men began to shoot in these parts.”

“Do you remember the place before shooting began?” asked the fox in great wonderment.

“Not perhaps before the gun began to be used,” replied the eagle, “but my memory goes back to times when there was very little shooting indeed. The moors were all undrained, the forests were sheep farms for the most part, and the deer were not preserved. The Highland boys used to load their old guns with slugs and black powder pushed in with a ramrod, and would wait at the springs for the deer, and if they shot one would salt it for winter eating. Then the lairds were poor men, and shared their deer with the poachers. I was a young bird in those days, though I shall never be old. The eagle renews his youth, and I expect to record a hundred years. Now I must be off, here comes my mate.”

The mother bird was a black speck in the distance, but her mate’s loving eye could find her out, and he sailed away to meet her as she came heavily towards the nest, a young pig in her claws. She found a farmhouse, and dropped on to the pig-sty, where mother sow had presented her owners with a litter of seven. Six had managed to get within cover, the seventh, a weakly little animal, had paid the penalty, and was already pork. The farmer’s wife had seen the outrage, but her husband and sons were working on another part of the land and could not be reached. So the eaglets had a splendid meal of sucking-pig, and there was enough for the parents too.

In a few weeks the down on the eaglets’ bodies had turned to feathers, and they were completely fledged, handsome birds, like their parents in all respects save that they had a white ring on the tail feathers. One morning after they had learned to fly and were beginning to enjoy the exercise, the Golden Eagle addressed them seriously.

He and his mate had just come from the farmhouse where they had surprised a couple of hens.