This noblest of the British birds of prey used at one time to breed in some localities in England and Wales, but it has gradually retreated farther and farther north, and is now restricted (as a breeder) to the Highlands and the western islands of Scotland. Fortunately, it now receives protection from the owners of large deer-forests in its northern habitat, and there is reason to hope that it will long continue to exist as a British species.
This species is very dark in hue, and is known in Scotland as the ‘black eagle.’ The colour is a very deep brown, the feathers of the head and nape tinged with reddish gold—hence its name of golden eagle. It preys on hares, rabbits, grouse, ptarmigan, and other birds, and occasionally destroys lambs and fawns, and will even attack full-grown ewes and deer.
The nest is a bulky structure of sticks, placed, as a rule, on a crag, sometimes in a tree, and the same nest is used year after year. Two or three eggs are laid, white or pale bluish green in ground-colour, blotched, spotted, and clouded with reddish brown and purple-grey under-markings.
Owing to his great size, dark colour, and power of wing, this eagle makes a very noble figure when flying. But he is noble in appearance at other times as well, and in this he differs from many of the larger species that are equally strong on the wing, or even much stronger—condors, vultures, albatrosses, and others. These, when they fold their pinions, lose all their majesty. But the golden eagle has just as grand a presence when perched as when soaring. The pleasure produced in us by the sight of this creature appears to differ in character from that which we find in contemplating such species as excel in elegance and grace, or in rich colouring—the mute swan glassed in the water it floats upon, and the peacock with splendid starry train. He is built on different lines, that indicate power and rapine; but his appearance in repose is not less attractive than theirs, and, in a sense, not less beautiful. Tennyson, in a few well-known lines, has described it better, perhaps, than any other writer—the majestic bird and the nature it inhabits, and is in harmony with—its sublimity and desolation:—
He grasps the crag with hooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed by the azure world he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls:
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.