Page:Condor17(5).djvu/9

Sept., 1915 CHARACTERISTIC BIRDS OF THE DAKOTA PRAIRIES 179 lark whose pure minor notes have the sweetness, the serenity, and uplift that belong to the big clean prairie open under the sky. Beautiful prairies! How they fill the imagination and free the mind of the escaped city dweller ! Miles and miles of prairie with hardly a house in sight, unclouded skies, and strong vivifying sunshine tempered by the cool fresh wind from far away ! Washington? D. C, May 23, 1915. A WALKING EAGLE FROM RANCHO LA BREA By LOYE HOLMES MILLER ?rITH ONE PHOTO BY H. S. SWARTH O DISCUSS in a magazine of ornithology an extinct species of bird whose latest known remains are perhaps a quarter of a million years old may seem a bit of an impropriety--an unwarranted liberty to take with TH? CONDOR'S pages; yet many have indiscreetly (or politely) enquired from time to time of the progress of work on the Rancho La Brea fossil birds; hence this proffered contribution. The finding Of remains of Labrador Duck, Pallas C0r- morant, or Great Auk, would furnish a news item which many would read with great interest. An egg of the Great Auk put up at auction among enthusiastic collectors would stimulate an interest easier to imagine than to describe. These birds are extinct. Most ornithologists know, and will know, )?tle of them beyond the fact that they are extinct, yet the very name has a sound that catches the atteniion. It is hoped that Morphnus daggetti may appeal as hav- ing at least the distinction of extinction. Really, though , to the enthusiast, there are other reasons why heis of interest. Among the hundred thousand or more bird bones in the collection made at Rancho La Brea by the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art, there have been found two specimens which represent a species of eagle of most astonishing character. The part representedis that segment of the post- erior limb known to the ornithologist as the tarsus--perhaps the most char- acteristic bone of the bird's body. This certainly is an eagle's tarsus. It is somewhat less in transverse measurement than is the same bone of the golden eagle (Aquila), but in linear dimension it is nothing less than startling. When it is laid alongside of the tarsus of the Great Blue Heron (Ardea, see fig. 63) there is seen to be less than a quarter of an inch difference in length between the two bones. An eagle on stilts is the instant impression--an impression not new to one who has seen that South African anomaly, the Secretary Bird (Serpentarius), yet an impression that comes as a breath-catching surprise here in the vicinity of Los Angeles. It was the writer's great pleasure, through courtesy of the New York Zoological Society, to enter the cages at the Bronx and study the live Secre- tary Bird in its feeding, running, and perching actions. The prehensile func- tion of the foot has been entirely abandoned for the sake of an ambulatory function. The Secretary Bird is indeed a stilt-walker--an eagle without talons. When the long-shanked eagle from the asphalt was first encountered, the ques- tions at once arose: "Is there evidence of degeneracy as an eagle ? Was he a walking bird? Does he show kinship with South Africa and her Secretary Bird ?"