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The Last Eagle
by Daniel Mannix
How I came to write this book
In 1939, when my wife and I were on our honeymoon, we stopped at Salem, New Jersey, to see Mr. Thompson, the game warden, who had long been a friend of mine. Mr. Thompson had a young Bald Eagle in a chicken coop. The eagle was obviously most unhappy — but not so unhappy she didn't do her best to get at our little Cairn terrier, Wriggles. Mr. Thompson said the bird had come down during an ice storm and he had taken her in. Later, he'd tried to release her but she had become so used to civilization, she stayed near Salem killing chickens. When the chicken farmers objected, he recaptured her.
I'd always been interested in the Bald Eagle and my wife and I had just spent three months photographing an eagle's nest from a blind on top of a 60-foot steel tower at Bombay Hook, Delaware. During this time we recorded on color motion picture film the growth of the young, how they were fed by the parent birds, the quarrels (resulting in the death of one bird), how the young male played with an eel and subsequently turned his attention to a grapevine dropped by the father bird (as described in this book) and, finally, the parents luring the young birds, now fully feathered, from the nest with food. A copy of the film was given to the (then) Biological Survey and I have subsequently lectured with it hundreds of times. I believe this was the first color motion picture sequence of the life of the Bald Eagle at the nest.
Being a falconer, I was interested in trying to train Mr. Thompson's eagle for falconry. To the best of my knowledge, a Bald Eagle had been trained only once before — by the late Captain C. W. R. Knight. Captain Knight had trained a number of eagles but he assured me that the Bald Eagle was the most independent, individualistic and bad tempered of any. Even so I decided to make the attempt.
Mr. Thompson was glad to get rid of his sullen captive and there were no legal restrictions, since at that time the Bald Eagle was not given federal protection; in fact, in several states they were regarded as vermin. My wife and I took the eagle to Taxco, Mexico, and named her Aguila. We hunted various types of game with her, especially the big mountain iguanas. I wrote a story about her for The Saturday Evening Post and as a result Universal Pictures asked me to do a two-reel featurette about Aguila and her exploits. To make the picture, I also obtained a Golden Eagle and flew the birds together. Altogether, my wife and I spent three years in Mexico with the birds.
As every naturalist knows, the Bald Eagle is not an accomplished hunter like her cousin, the Golden Eagle. The Bald Eagle's main food is fish, she is not above eating carrion, and she ordinarily will not hunt game if there is an easier way to obtain food. However, she will hunt if necessary, and can hunt as well as her powerful cousin, although she is not as large nor as strong.
Our Golden Eagle behaved much like a large hawk. She showed no ability to distinguish between persons, never indicated a desire to play and never exhibited any outbursts of temperament. Aguila was quite different. She took violent dislikes to certain people. One, unfortunately, was the director of our picture. If Aguila was circling around in the sky and refused to come down for a sequence, this man had only to show himself for Aguila to come plummeting down and swoop at him with outstretched talons.
Aguila liked to play. She would toy with a rubber ball or a piece of cloth and make playful attacks on me and my wife. She liked to tease both the Golden Eagle and our dog, usually by stealing food from them. After obtaining the food she would drop it and turn to something else.
In this book I have attempted to interpret how I believe a Bald Eagle thinks. This, of course, automatically exposes me to the fatal charge of anthropomorphism. Apart from my own experiences, I have made liberal use of references from Francis H. Herrick, The American Eagle (D. Appleton-Century Co. New York, 1934), which is the definite work on this remarkable bird; Arthur Cleverland Brent, Life History of North American Birds of Prey (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1938); Charles L. Broley, Eagle Man (Pellegrini & Cudahy, New York, 1952) and the recent magnificent Birds of Prey of the World by Mary L. Grossman and John Hamlet (Clarkson N. Potter, New York, 1964). Another extremely useful publication has been The Bald Eagle and Its Economic Status, Circular 30, Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1955.
In addition, I spent several months traveling around the country talking to men who have had extensive personal experience observing the Bald Eagle in the wild. Especially helpful were Frederick Schmidt, field observer for the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, Maryland; Maurice Broun of Hawk Mountain; Frederick K. Truslow (whose fine article on the Bald Eagle at the nest appeared in The National Geographic Magazine, January 1961); Charles Brookfield of the Audubon Society, Miami, Florida; Alexander Sprunt Jr., and Roland Clement, also Audubon field workers, and John Hamlet. I am also indebted to many accounts of the Bald Eagle which have appeared in the Audubon Magazine. I should, of course, emphasize that any statements I have made about the birds are my own interpretation of what was told me in light of my own experiences with Bald Eagles.
Lastly, I hope I will be allowed a certain amount of latitude as a writer of fiction. The Bald Eagle is now threatened with extinction throughout the continental United States. There are probably not more than 3500 left. I am hopeful that a sympathetic novel about our national bird presenting him as a personality rather than as an ornithological specimen will do more to interest the general public in preserving this uniquely American bird than would a more formal treatise.
Chapter 1
He was born near Chesapeake Bay, high in an elm that was gradually being killed by the weight of the huge nest. His parents had nested so early that one morning he awoke from the bed of soft, dead grass with which his mother had covered him and found to his astonishment that a white substance was covering the nest. He picked at it curiously and felt it was icy cold. His parents cleaned it away with their great beaks and talons and he gratefully snuggled down, glad of the warmth of his brother and sister as well as the hot weight of his mother when she settled over the fledglings. He was still covered with a soft grayish down and his minute body was not strong enough to support his oversized beak and claws. So awkward and out of proportion was he that he looked like a misshapen puppet; a Punch all head and nose. He had barely strength enough to lift his head when his mother came in with food, and his brother was even weaker. What goaded him to make the effort was the sight of his big sister sitting up on her elbows with wide-open mouth screaming for food. Being a female, she was one-third larger than the two males and correspondingly more powerful and aggressive. He was fiercely competitive; the sight of any other creature with food inspired him to feats of strength no mere hunger could have done. So he would force himself to rise on his elbows, open his mouth, and jostle for position since his mother fed whichever of the babies could get to her the quickest.
