Notes on the 'bearded eagle’

I cannot be the only person in lockdown digging out books that are normally rarely opened, which prompts me to share an extract from Cassell’s Natural History Vol III edited by P Martin Duncan MB FRS*. The text (including the splendid drawing shown here) runs to 3½ pages and is based on accounts by various correspondents. These two paragraphs particularly caught my eye, about the 'Bearded Eagle, or Lämmergeier’. Line drawing scanned from Cassell’s Natural History Vol III. ‘In Algeria, the Lämmergeier is said to feed largely on Land Tortoises, which it carries to a great height in the air, and drops upon a convenient rock, so as to break the shell. So much has been written upon the habits of this bird that it would be impossible to give here one tithe of the interesting notes which have been published in various works and periodical; but no history of the species, however brief, would be complete without a passing mention of the little girl who was said to have been carried off