They are not uncommon in the wildest parts of Scotland and Ireland, and though, of course, persecuted everywhere, they succeed by their extraordinary wariness and admirable judgment as to breeding-places in keeping their ground. For the erne has the expert eye of an engineer for an "inaccessible" spot, and having found one that nothing that moves on feet can reach, it returns to it year after year, and brings out its young in security. All that our poets have written of their eagles of fancy may, for majesty in flight, be fairly applied to this bird. "When the tempest's at its loudest, on the gale the eagle rides,"--"playmate of the storm,"--"triumphant on the bosom of the storm, glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form,"--"a swift eagle, in the morning glare, breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,"--all these are quite applicable to the sea-eagle, for folk say that no tempest that ever blew could keep the erne at home. When the sea-birds are driven inland, the ernes remain to wheel about as if enraptured in the storm-distracted sky--and "like spirits hardened by despair, joy in the savage tempest." There is nothing mean about it. A law to itself, and therefore lawless; stronger than any other fowl it ever sees, and therefore a tyrant; a bird of prey, and therefore pitiless. Its eyrie is a citadel that cannot be stormed, and the fierce-eyed robber, seated on its eminence, overlooks the townships of the gulls, and as it pleases takes manorial tithe of the fish plunder they bring up from the sea, and of their young, "Voracious from the billows' breast Marked far away, his destined feast." [Illustration: GUILLEMOTS] Its cry is a cruel, clear-ringing bark, very characteristic of the fierce baron of the cliffs, and when circling in company a pair can be heard yelping to each other until eye and ear together fail to catch sight or sound of them. When they are young the sea eagles, as yet unconscious perhaps of their birthright of supremacy, roam about among the moors and valleys, finding their food where they can, killing weakly lambs, or joining the raven in an ignoble meal on carrion. Sometimes, strange to say, this creature of vast spaces and dizzy heights will nest in trees or even among reeds upon the ground. But its characteristic haunts are the wildest and most rugged sea-cliffs, and its hunting-grounds the rocky islets or tall upstanding bluffs and "peopled rocks" upon which the sea-folk cluster in their colonies. "_The high and frowning scaur, the haunt of sea-fowl_" MACKAY. "_The pregnant cliffs, the sea-birds' citadels_" MONTGOMERY. "_Yonder peopled rocks,_ _To whose wild solitude, from worlds unknown,_ _The birds of passage transmigrating come--_ * * * * * _By Heaven's directive spirit here to raise_ _Their temporary realm._" MALLET.