Identifier: britishbirdswith03butl (find matches)
Title: British birds with their nests and eggs
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Butler, Arthur Gardiner, 1844-1925
Subjects: Birds Birds
Publisher: London, Brumby & Clarke
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: American Museum of Natural History Library

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quest of food. Here it makesits eyrie, retiirning year after year to the same station. It was a more commonbird than the Golden Eagle but, like that species, has suffered cruel persecution,and for a century or more has been exterminated in all its ancient haunts inEngland and Wales. In old days it is said to have had eyries on Lundy Island,at the mouth of the Bristol Channel; on the Dewerstone Rock, near Plymouth ;in the Isles of Wight and Man ; in the Lake District, and probably in Wales;but at the present time any one who would wish to see it in a wild state mustseek it in the Western Isles of Scotland. As the immature birds wander south in the autumn and winter the White-tailedEagle is oftener seen in the South of England than the Golden Eagle, althoughadult birds are very rare; on the eastern coasts it is almost a regular autumnalvisitor, and the writer has known of several instances of its occurrence of lateyears in Devon and Cornwall, and on the Ouantock Hills in West Somerset.
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ai o< QUJJ < H LUH ^ The White-Tailed Eagle. 9 Rabbit wairens, estuaries, the lakes in parks, and decoys, are the places mostvisited by the young birds on their migrations. In Ireland, where the White-tailed Eagle was once numerous, but few now survive, poison placed in carrionhaving accounted for most of them. Robert Gi-ay considered the Isle of Skye thehead quarters of the White-tailed Eagle in Scotland, and there was a time whenevery bold headland maintained its pair; but even there a remorseless war hasbeen waged against them; fifty-seven shot on one estate, fifty-two on another, so runsthe tale of blood, the nests, too, were destroyed by burning peats being let downinto them by ropes! Harvie Brown writes: There is no doubt about the markeddecrease in the number of inhabited eyries of the White-tailed Eagle during thepast fifteen years. * It is onl)^ on the inaccessible cliffs of some of the remotestand smallest islands, like those of the Shiant group in the Outer Hebrides,

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