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Show FREEDOM'S BIRD IS IN DANGER War on the Bald Eagle Based on Slanders. Prepared by National Geographic Society. Washington. D. C. WNU Service. BIRD lovers, disturbed by the threatened extermination of the white-headed or bald eagle, have taken up the fight to protect America's bird of freedom whose rugged profile adorns American seals and coins as the emblem of the nation. In Its structure and habits, the eagle Is a large hawk, of close kin to the falcons, buzzards and harriers of every clime, but the biggest, boldest and most powerful raptor of them alL The female, which in the American Amer-ican eagle is the larger sex, may attain a length of 43 Inches, may spread eight feet, and, according to Audubon, may weigh from eight to twelve pounds, though these last figures may be greatly exceeded In captive birds. It Is a stranger to fatigue, can probably lift Its own weight, and has been known to carry car-ry a lamb over a distance of five miles. Our eagle Is content to subsist upon fish whenever there Is an ample am-ple supply, but Is too partial to waterfowl to becotae a favorite with sportsmen, though It never kills for sport; and is too fond of chicken dinners, mutton chops and suckling perience; but should the eagle's eyrie be placed low or in more remote re-mote and wilder regions, the marauder ma-rauder will do well to watch his steps or he may meet with the surprise sur-prise of his life ; for, like the she bear, the eagle can and often will defend its young, and In attack It Is a swift and formidable adversary. adver-sary. That the American eagle will sometimes put up a stiff fight In the defense of its nest, or when hard pressed on the ground, we have ample evidence. Capt. B. F. Goss thus wrote to Captain Bendlre of his experience at a nest built on a small island In the vicinity of Corpus Christ'i, Texas: "Both parent birds attacked us with great fury, screaming and striking at us with their talons. While examining the nest, they came within a few feet of me and I was glad to retire." When Caught In a Trap. The late Hon. John G. White of Cleveland has given the following account of what happened on two occasions at Jackson Hole when an eagle was caught In a trap set for bear: "We would have released him," wrote the Judge, "but the trap had scraped his leg and he would not allow us near. When we came up to the stockade he was lying down. As soon as he saw us he reared himself up on his sound leg, favoring favor-ing the trapped one as 'much as he could, and, with head drawn back and feathers erected, defied us and r V ' IT I 11 Asiatic Hunter With Eagle. struck at us fiercely when we attempted at-tempted to approach. As there was no way to release him, we had to kill him." Like the giant of old, when beaten beat-en to the earth, he promptly arose with fighting powers renewed, for "in an Instant he was on his feet again, as Indomitable as ever, and this continued after every blow, until un-til at length he was killed. To the end he was fiercely defiant. . . . Such a picture as he made of Indomitable In-domitable courage, persistent to the last, I never saw." Most would agree with the judge, that It would be hard to find a better bet-ter emblem for a free and courageous coura-geous nation than this indomitable bird. The eagle Is the greatest home-keeper home-keeper of his class. His eyrie Is his castle, which, as we have seen, he will at times defend against all comers. In it his eaglets spend the first ten weeks of their life from mid-April' until early July, upon the southern shore of Lake Erie and It Is the occasional rendezvous, lookout point, and dining table for pigs ever to become popular In rural communities. Now It has been accused, though with scant show of justice, of destroying de-stroying salmon and young' reindeer rein-deer in Alaska, where the territorial terri-torial legislature has set a price upon its hoary head. For ten years or more a ruthless war has been waged against our national bird In that territory, until more eagles have been destroyed some estimates esti-mates running as high as forty or fifty thousand than were thought to exist on the whole continent. It is safe to say that forty thousand thou-sand eagles could not appreciably affect the supply of Alaskan salmon in forty thousand years. But man, with Ms wasteful methods, intent only on present gains, must find a culprit and the eagle was a convenient con-venient victim. Franklin Derided Him. But this is not all; for, aside from the eagle's occasional raids upon the farmer's stock and poultry, poul-try, which In most parts of the country are far from habitual or serious, our bird's moral character has been assailed. His reputed turpitude was early expressed by Benjamin Franklin in a letter written writ-ten in France on January 2G, 17S4, and has been quoted with approval since. At that time the Order of Cincinnati, Cin-cinnati, which had been recently created in America and had adopted adopt-ed the "bald eagle" as its emblem, was a fair target for critics on both sides of the water. Franklin thought that a bird which was too lazy to fish for himself, but robbed the honest fish hawk on every occasion, and was so rank a coward as to permit the little kingbird to "drive him out of the district," was "by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America," who by their prowess had "driven all the kingbirds from our country." The eagle, like the fish hawk, must follow the Instincts with which nature has endowed it, but that upon occasion it is a carrion-feeder, carrion-feeder, like most of its kind, Is probably to be set down to Its credi t. Perhaps it is too late to point out that the eagle Is never "driven out of the district" by the kingbird or by any other living being except a man armed with a gun. It Is true that he is constantly annoyed by the little tyrants whenever he crosses their nesting preserves, but he Is too indifferent or too much bored by such attacks to do more than deflect his coursa Bold Enough When Necessary. The trouble with those writers who have complained of the timidity timid-ity of our national bird lies In attributing at-tributing to the species, which of course must include every Individual Individ-ual of the kind In question, what they have observed In but few Individuals, In-dividuals, or perhaps In only one and under one set of conditions. They forget that behavior In a given case may vary not alone with that Individual's inheritance and age, but, most of all, If It be intelligent, intel-ligent, with habit In the sense of profiting by experience. All eagles, like many of the lnwks. when wounded or hard pressed, will fight like demons; and we might expect them to fight to protect their young; but while some will do this, others will not. It all depends upon the acquired or momentary balance between caution cau-tion and fear, as dictated by experience, expe-rience, or upon the resultant of their Inherited and acquired powers. pow-ers. The e.TL'le offers a lar?e target, whether upon Its eyrie or In the air, and in settled communities, ! where Its wits must be constantly j pitted against those of man. circum-I circum-I spection becomes the rule of life i and caution the price of liberty. ' Trusting Its young to the inac-1 inac-1 cessihility of their nest, it usually beeps at a safe distance whenever this Is approached, for It has learned Its lessons from bitter ex- the elder pair for the remainder of the year. Habits of Our Eagle. With us the eagle Is nonmlgra-tory, nonmlgra-tory, or a very Irregular migrant, never leaving his home neighborhood neighbor-hood for long and only when his food supplies run out. The first year's nest Is framed with sticks, usually from 2 to 6 feet long and from 1 to 2 Inches thick, and well bedded with straw, cornstalks, and stubble, the whole measuring about five feet each way. In it are laid two or, more rarely, three dull white eggs, resembling somewhat those of the domestic goose, and, It Is believed, at Intervals Inter-vals of several days, beginning In this latitude in mid or late March. In from four to five weeks the young are hatched In white down, which contrasts sharply with their dark eyes and their almost black, hooked bills. This natal covering Is shortly replaced with a thick coat of close gray down, to be In turn gradually combed off, until they have acquired their full juvenal dress of dark-brown feathers by the end of May or the beginning of June. Early In the latter month the eaglets are becoming sleeker every day through their Incessant attentions atten-tions to their toilet, and with their brown dappled dress and clean yellow yel-low logs make a fine appearance. Already they are nearly as large ns their parents and have a wing-spread wing-spread of more than six feet; yet from two to three weeks of voracious vora-cious feeding and ardent exercise are still required before they will have gained sufficient courage and the proper co-ordination of muscle and nerves to leave the eyrie under un-der their own power. After freedom has been attained, a few more weeks are spent In com. pany with their parents, who still continue to bring them food, and with them they make frequent visits vis-its to their old home; but the day eventually arrives when parental guidance and protection cease and the young go forth to seek, far from their native heath, their substance sub-stance and their fortune, and In due course tf found a hoii,ti of their own. |