Читать книгу Birds and Nature Vol. 9 No. 4 [April 1901] - Various - Страница 5

In January, 1900, I had given me a Golden Eagle. He had been picked up in a stunned condition in the foot-hills, having received a shock from the electric wires, on which he had probably alighted for a moment or struck in his flight. There is an electric power-house in the Sierras opposite Fresno, from which pole lines carry the strong current down to be used for power and light in the valley, and this was by no means the first record of eagles and other large birds being stunned or killed by them.

The person who found him had brought him down with the idea of having him stuffed, but as he showed a good deal of life, I begged to keep him alive, and he was handed over to me. He was evidently a young bird of the previous season, though nearly full grown. From tip to tip of his wings he was over five feet, and his wonderful black talons measured one and one-half to two inches beyond the feathers. His legs were handsomely feathered down to the claws, and his proud head, with its strong beak, large, piercing eyes, and red and yellow-brown feathers, was a thing of beauty. The rest of his body was dark, almost black, with the exception of three or four white diamonds showing on the upper tail feathers.

I kept him in a big box open on one side. When I first brought him home and had put him into the box, a neighbor’s poodle came sniffing around for the meat I had brought for the eagle. He was on the back side of the box, and so could not see that there was anything in it, nor did he hear anything, but all at once the scent of the bird must have struck his nostrils, for with a squall of fear he disappeared from the yard and never afterward would venture near the cage.

During the time I kept the eagle, some two months, he never showed any desire to attack me, though his claws would have gone through my hand like a knife, nor did he display any fear of me. He never made any attempt to get out while anyone was in sight of him, nor did I catch him in any such attempt, but sometimes at night I would hear him, and every morning his wings, beak and feathers showed he never gave up the hope of getting free.

I never fed him to the full extent of his capacity, but gave him from a pound to a pound and a half of meat daily at noon, which he devoured in a very short time, sticking his claws through the toughest beef and tearing it like ribbons with his beak. It was wonderful to see how clean he could pick a bone with his clumsy-looking great beak. I never knew him to touch any kind of food but raw meat. When anything was handed in to him, no matter how high up, he never accepted it in his bill, but struck at it with a lightning-like movement of his claws, scarcely ever missing it.

One day he snapped in two one of the bars across his cage, pried off another and got out. I was telephoned that my eagle was out, and hurried home to find all the children in the neighborhood blockaded indoors. The eagle was perched on the grape-arbor easily surveying the lay of things. A cat had crawled into the wood-pile and under the doorsteps the venerable cock of the yard was congratulating himself on his safety, but feeling rather undignified. I procured a rope and took my first lessons in lassoing. The eagle had been so closely confined that he had not been able to gain the full use of his wings, and so could only run or flutter a few feet from the ground. I finally recaptured him and brought him back. He showed no fear and offered little resistance.

About the middle of March the weather became very hot, and it was really cruel to keep the bird penned up in such close quarters in such weather, so I took him out to the plains and set him free. He could not use his wings much, and it is very doubtful if he escaped the shotgun or rifle of some predatory small boy, but it was the best I could do for him. He was a beautiful specimen of a bird, and I only wish I could have kept him.

Charles Elmer Jenney.