The adults have the head, throat, and all the upper and under surface
blackish brown, stained on the edges and extremities of many of the
feathers, particularly the wing and upper tail-coverts with pale brown;
back and sides of the neck rusty-red; irides hazel; cere and space round
the eye yellowish white; bill yellowish horn-colour, passing into black
at the tip; feet light yellow.
The young have the head and back of the neck deep fawn-colour, striated
with lighter; all the feathers of the upper surface largely tipped and
stained with fawn and rusty-red; tail indistinctly barred near the
extremity; throat and breast blackish brown, each feather largely tipped
with rufous; the abdomen blackish brown.
The figure is about one-third of the natural size.
[Illustration:
AQUILA MORPHNOÏDES: _Gould_
_J. Gould and H. C. Richter, del^t_ _C. Hullmandel Imp._
]
AQUILA MORPHNOÏDES, _Gould_.
Little Australian Eagle.
_Aquila Morphnoïdes_, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., Part VIII. p. 161.
I shall perhaps better convey an idea of the rarity of this small but
true species of _Aquila_, by stating that the specimen from which the
accompanying drawing was made, and which forms part of my own
collection, is the only one I have ever seen either living or dead. It
is the second species of the genus known to inhabit Australia, and it is
singular that while the Wedge-tailed Eagle is so common, the present
species should be so rare, or, perhaps, so restricted in its range of
habitat. This Eagle is as clearly an analogue of the _Aquila pennata_ of
Europe, as the Wedge-tailed Eagle is of the Golden. Its specific
distinctions from _Aq. pennata_ are its large size, the total absence of
the white mark on the shoulder, and the cere and feet being of a
lead-colour instead of yellowish-olive.
The part of Australia where I shot the specimen above alluded to, was
Yarrundi on the River Hunter, on a portion of Mr. Coxen’s estate near
Tooloogan. I was led to the discovery of the bird by finding its nest
containing a single egg, upon which it had been sitting for some time. I
regret to add, that although I several times visited the nest after
killing the bird, all my attempts at procuring the other sex were
entirely unsuccessful. The nest was of a large size and was placed close
to the hole, about one-fourth of the height from the top of one of the
highest gum-trees; the egg was bluish white with very faint traces of
brown blotchings, two inches and two lines long by one inch and nine
lines broad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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