The King of Birds—and Others Bird Life at Home and
Abroad.. By T. A. Coward. (Frederick Warne. 'is. 6c1.) WHAT a splendid adventure Mr. Seton Gordon has described for us in this, the latest and surely the most deeply fascinating of all his books. So little is known even yet of the golden eagle's home life that even the mere chronicle of events—how the various eyries were located, the eagle's method of building, the behaviour of eaglets on being presented with a roe-deer calf for dinner and so on—would make as enthralling a narrative as any naturalist could wish for. But Mr. Seton Gordon, besides possessing the indefatigable patience necessary for making systematic observations from a " hide " through all weathers, has the poetry of his native Highlands in him and a pen that can express it, and this book is not so much the diary of' an observer among the eagles as an epic of what the author himself has called " the high tops "—the mountain pine-forests and windy lochs and glens of the golden eagle's country.
Here is a paragraph taken at random from the first part of the book, in which the story of Cain and Abel, the two eaglets. who were always fighting or shouting for a second course of
ptarmigan, is told with such charm of detail and • delicious humour. Cain, the female, has been lambasting the wretched le
Abel all the afternoon, and, as usual, it is not till her mother k
arrives that she desists :— " For an hour and a quarter the mother eagle remained at the eyrie, and during much of this time she fed Cain, who.c,onsumed an astonishing amount of food for one so small. Her crop bulged more and more, until it seemed as though it must burst, and still she accepted complacently the food her mother continued to offer. From time to time this gorged and self-satisfied eaglet looked down with contempt (so it seemed to me) upon poor Abel lying beside her without appetite . . . At last the eaglet was so gorged sho unable to swallow even the choicest morsel of grouse, and then tie mother herself gulped down the entrails, which hung in long ribbon' from her bill as she gobbled them up with evident delight, reminding one of an expert macaroni consumer."
Mr. Seton Gordon, in collaboration with his intrepid wife,
who took watch and watch with him in the " has obtained many really magnificent photographs illustrating the chapters on "a pair of eagles and their home life," one showing the four eagles at the nest together ; and lie has, besides, collected scores of Highland stories about the eagle which equally contribute towards making this book an epic- of the King of Birds. One of these stories relates how some ravelli were feeding in the snow on a dead sheep, when an eagle appeared,* which, as the ravens were rising from the ground, swooped down and seized a large raven with its talons. eagle alighted, dropped the raven beside the carcase, nod commenced to feed on the sheep. The raven was quite dead' having- been pierced through the body.' The author She prints that old Celtic legend which tells how the eagle and the wren competed one against the other for the high-kieg championship of the world. " Whete are you now, lit* wren ? " cried the eagle exultantly when he had flown to an immense height. To his amazement from his back Cantle a :brill small voice, " Tha mise an so do eheann " (" I am here above your head "), a story which shows the title of this review to be actually an insult to the real King of Birds.
Such an unprecedented number of books about birds in general have been published within recent months that, for reasons of space, it is quite impossible for us to give them all even the briefest of reviews, competent though they mostly are, but Mr. Coward's descriptions of bird-life in various parts of the world—from the Basses Pyrenees to the lowlands of Holland and the Shetland Lochs—are too good to be missed by bird- lovers, and we can whole-heartedly recommend this book. The author has something to say, not only about birds, but about hills and vineyards, butterflies and flamingoes, and the ethics of egg-collecting, and he says it all with knowledge and
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