In flight it is one of the most magnificent birds that can be seen, and even when perched it often retains a certain look of majesty and grandeur. Sometimes, however, especially when basking in the sun, it assumes a series of attitudes which are absolutely grotesque, and convert the noble-looking bird into a positively ludicrous object. At one moment it will sit all hunched up, its head sunk between its shoulders, and one wing trailing behind it as if broken. At another it will bend its legs and sit down on the ankle-joint, pushing its feet out in front, and supporting itself by the stiff feathers of its tail. Often it will touch nearly flat on the ground, partly spread its wings, and allow their tips to rest on the earth, and sometimes it will support nearly all the weight of its body on the wings, which rest, in a half doubled state, on the ground. I have before me a great number of sketches, taken in a single day, of the attitudes assumed by one of these birds, every one of which is strikingly different from the others, and transforms the whole shape of the bird so much that it is scarcely recognisable as the same individual. [Illustration: tree] [Illustration: eagle] THE EAGLE. Signification of the word _Asniyeh_--The Golden Eagle and its habits--The Imperial Eagle--Its solitary mode of life--The Short-toed Eagle--Its domestic habits and fondness for the society of man--The Osprey, or Fishing Eagle--Its mode of catching fish--Its distribution in Palestine. As to the Eagle, rightly so called, there is little doubt that it is one of the many birds of prey that seem to have been classed under the general title of Asniyeh--the word which in the Authorized Version of the Bible is rendered as Osprey. A similar confusion is observable in the modern Arabic, one word, _ogab_, being applied indiscriminately to all the Eagles and the large _falconidæ_. The chief of the true Eagles, namely, the Golden Eagle (_Aquila chrysaëtos_), is one of the inhabitants of Palestine, and is seen frequently, though never in great numbers. Indeed, its predacious habits unfit it for associating with its kind. Any animal which lives chiefly, if not wholly, by the chase, requires a large district in order to enable it to live, and thus twenty or thirty eagles will be scattered over a district of twice the number of miles. Like the lion among the mammalia, the Eagle leads an almost solitary life, scarcely ever associating with any of its kind except its mate and its young. The whole of the Falconidæ, as the family to which the Eagles belong is called, are very destructive birds, gaining their subsistence chiefly by the chase, seldom feeding on carrion except when pressed by hunger, or when the dead animal has only recently been killed. Herein they form a complete contrast to the vultures, whose usual food is putrefying carrion, and fresh meat the exception.