given me in egg-hunting, and also to Captain Hubback for his notes from
Alderney during the times he was quartered there.




BIRDS OF GUERNSEY.


1. WHITE-TAILED EAGLE. _Haliaeetus albicilla_, Linnsaeus. French, "Aigle
pygarque," "Pygarque ordinaire."--The White-tailed Eagle is an
occasional but by no means uncommon visitant to all the Islands. I have
seen specimens from Alderney, Guernsey, and Herm, and have heard of its
having been killed in Sark more than once. It usually occurs in the
autumn, and, as a rule, has a very short lease of life after its arrival
in the Islands, which is not to be wondered at, as it is considered, and
no doubt is, mischievous both to sheep and poultry; and in so thickly
populated a country, where every one carries a gun, a large bird like
the White-tailed Eagle can hardly escape notice and consequent
destruction for any length of time. It might, however, if unmolested,
occasionally remain throughout the winter, and probably sometimes
wanders to the Islands at that time, as Mr. Harvie Brown records
('Zoologist' for 1869, p. 1591) one as having been killed, poisoned by
strychnine, in Herm in the month of January. This was, no doubt, a late
winter visitant, as it is hardly possible that the bird can have escaped
for so long a time, as it would have done had it visited the Islands at
its usual time, October or November. All the Channel Island specimens of
the White-tailed Eagle which I have seen have been young birds of the
first or second year, in the immature plumage in which the bird is known
as the Sea Eagle of Bewick, and in which it is occasionally mistaken for