The Golden Eagle
By SETON GORDON
SINCE we have now lost the white-tailed or sea eagle as a British nesting species, let us take heed lest the golden eagle shares a like fate, for after a lifetime spent studying the species 1 have no hesitation in affirming that the golden eagle is our grandest and most noble bird. What is the position of Aquila
chrysaetos in the Scottish Highlands today ? I would say that, taking the Highlands as a whole, the species is holding its own. War years are favourable to the eagle, in that game-preserving is forgotten, yet there were areas in which the golden eagle's life was disturbed in those recent years. In the Cairngorm Hills war-time exercises were practised, and the rattle of machine-gun fire terrified eagle and red deer alike.
The golden eagle temporarily deserted some of its ancient strong- holds in that area, but it has now returned, and the nesting season of 1950 was a successful one. Almost all the Cairngorm eyries are known, and in pre-war years collectors robbed many of them. Now, for the time being at all events, the egg-collector is less in evidence.
In the West Highlands and Islands there was an increase in the numbers of the golden eagle during the war years, and a number of new eyries were established. But during the last year at least two eyries in one western district have become vacant. Three eagles have been found dead, and the inference is that they have been poisoned. Since the hunting-range of the eagle is considerable, it is quite possible that they picked up poisoned carrion at a distance from the eyrie. In certain counties only is the golden eagle protected by law ; in others, sometimes adjacent ones, the bird may be killed legally.
It is from its western strongholds that the eagle has spread south during recent years. It has now established itself as a nesting species beyond the Highland area, and from its new eyries in South- West Scotland it is not far from the Lake District where, in previous centuries, this great bird bred. We may hear soon that it has nested, or has attempted to nest, amid the fells of Westmorland and Cum- berland. I hope that it may have a friendly reception there.
The golden eagle has enemies, and these enemies are of two classes. There is the game-preserver, who sees his day's sport inter- fered with and perhaps spoiled by an eagle, whose appearance is the signal for every grouse in the area to take wing and fly, wildly and often at a great height, over the horizon. It is not so much the number of grouse which it takes as its habit of clearing a moor that makes the eagle disliked by most sportsmen. It is therefore greatly to the credit of some of the great Highland landowners—the
Duke of Sutherland, for example, and the Duke of Westminster—
that they do all in their power to give protection to the eagle throughout the year, and especially during the nesting season. Sheep- farmers (there are honourable exceptions) dislike the golden eagle and sometimes wage war upon it because of its partiality for lambs. But let us go into this question carefully. My personal experience is not without weight, for I have watched the golden eagle, often on sheep-ground, for half a century, and on only one occasion have I seen a golden eagle carry off a living lamb. I stress the word "living," because I have seen an eagle pick up a dead lamb. On one occasion my wife and I were taken by a West Highland shep- herd to an eyrie in which no fewer than six dead lambs were lying. We expected to hear the shepherd say some hard things about the eagle, but he told us that the lambing season had been a poor one, with considerable mortality, and he was convinced that the lambs taken by the eagle had been lying dead on the hillside.
A prominent West Highland sheep-farmer, who had farmed in eagle country all his life, told me that he had never known an eagle carry off one of his lambs. In my opinion it is in districts where the eagle's natural prey is scarce that individual birds take to lamb- killing. The eagle's prey is mainly the rabbit and the blue hare, but there are areas where rabbits and hares are almost non-existent, and where the ground is too wet for 'grouse. Here the golden eagle may take an occasional lamb, but even so I have no doubt that most of the lambs taken have been found dead on the hillside. Some of the worst snowstorms of the year are experienced in the lambing season, and at this season—which falls considerably later in the Highlands than in the Lowlands—the eaglets are usually being hatched.
I believe that Scotland is now the chief nesting-ground of the golden eagle in Europe. In Sweden, in Switzerland, indeed I think in all Continental countries,, the eagle is decreasing. In Sweden the bird-protection societies are having no easy task to look after it in the north of that country, where the Laplanders accuse it of preying on their reindeer. In Switzerland Carl Stemmler, who nearly twenty years ago published a book Die Adler der Schweiz, and who hopes to publish a second work on this bird in the near future, warned his readers that the golden eagle in 1932 was in danger, of being exterminated in that country. He tells me that the position is now rather better than it then was, but that the bird is still being poisoned and shot in certain districts. During recent summers I have visited large areas of Switzerland and Norway without seeing a single eagle, although the type of country was apparently ideal for the bird.
Not many golden eagles die a natural death, but I believe that, under favourable circumstances, their life exceeds that of a hunian being. We, or our successors, may in time learn more of this if the young golden eagles which are now being ringed in the eyrie are recovered in later years. When I was looking through an old newspaper-cutting book belonging to a friend, I came across a contemporary account of the shooting of a golden eagle. This bird was shot in France in the year 1845. It had a collar of gold round its neck, and on the collar the inscription was engraved: "Caucasus patria, Fulgor nomen, Badinski dominus mihi est 1750. (Caucasus my country, Lightning thy name, Badinski my master 1750.) " The inference is that the eagle was used in falconry (as I believe it still is in the Caucasus) and may have been taken from the eyrie and trained for this purpose. But even if the collar had been placed round the bird's neck in the first year of its life, it still would have been ninety-five years old when shot in 1845. It had travelled far from its native land, but there was nothing in the newspaper report to show that it was old or failing in health. That the Highlander believed in the length of years of the eagle is shown by the old saying: "Thrice the life of a dog the life of a horse, Thrice the life of a horse the life of a man, Thrice the life of a man the life of a stag, Thrice the life of a stag the life of an eagle, Thrice the life of an eagle the life of an oak."
There are eyries in the Highlands which have been, to my know- ledge, in use for fifty years, and when I first knew them they were, even then, long established. The eaglet is slow to leave the eyrie, in which it remains for the best part of three months, and it is believed to be four years old before it nests. The same eyrie is sometimes used year after year, but more often than not there are two alterna- tive nests, sometimes three, in the neighbourhood. During the present winter I had the unusual experience of seeing a pair of golden eagles house-hunting. It was a clear and sunny November afternoon, and the eagles were sunning themselves on a pinnacle of their precipice. One of them flew off ; the other, after circling round, and picking up a small object in its bill, flew in at tremendous speed, and made a landing on the 1949 eyrie. Here he (for I think it was the male) looked carefully at the old, weather-beaten eyrie; then settled himself in it, fashioning afresh the cup with his breast. Thus, it seemed, the pair had already decided on the nursery for 1951.
This pair of eagles is a model one, and -daily during the long six weeks of incubation the male at intervals arrives at the eyrie to persuade (sometimes this is no easy task) his lady to allow him to brood the eggs so that she may have a spell off duty. In a very few minutes the female has disappeared from view, for the golden eagle is one of the fastest things that flies. It is rare that an eagle's flight-speed can be measured. In days when aeroplanes were less fast than they now are a naval flight-lieutenant sent an interesting letter to the Field. He was flying at seventy knots at a height of four thousand feet when a golden eagle overtook the 'plane, passing it without effort on a parallel' course.
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