(CROWNED HARPY.)
+Harpyhaliaëtus coronatus+, _Scl. et Salv. Nomencl._ p. 119; _Hudson,
P. Z. S._ 1872, p. 536 (Rio Negro); _Sharpe, Cat. B._ i. p. 221.
_Description._--Above ashy brown, with a long occipital crest of
darker feathers; wings grey with blackish tips; tail black, with a
broad white median band and white tip: beneath paler ashy brown,
thighs blackish: whole length 33 inches, wing 22·0, tail 13·5.
_Female_ similar, but larger.
_Hab._ South America.
I met with this fine Eagle on the Rio Negro, in Patagonia, where
d'Orbigny also found it; the entire Argentine Territory comes, however,
within its range. Having merely seen it perched on the tall willows
fringing the Rio Negro, or soaring in wide circles far up in the sky, I
cannot venture to speak of its habits, while the account of them which
d'Orbigny built up is not worth quoting, for he does not say how he got
his information. One of his statements would, if true, be very important
indeed. He says that his attention was drawn to a very curious fact
concerning the Crowned Harpy, which was, that this bird preys chiefly on
the skunk--an animal, he very truly adds, with so pestilential an odour
that even the most carnivorous of mammals are put to flight by it; that
it is the only bird of prey that kills the skunk, and that it does so by
precipitating itself from a vast height upon its quarry, which it then
quickly despatches. It would not matter at all whether the Eagle dropped
from a great or a moderate height, for in either case the skunk would
receive its enemy with the usual pestilent discharge. D'Orbigny's
account is, however, pure conjecture, and though he does not tell us
what led him to form such a conclusion, I have no doubt that it was
because the Eagle or Eagles he obtained had the skunk-smell on their
plumage. Most of the Eagles I shot in Patagonia, including about a dozen
Chilian Eagles, smelt of skunk, the smell being in most cases old and
faint. Of two Crowned Harpies obtained, only one smelt of skunk. This
only shows that in Patagonia Eagles attack the skunk, which is not
strange, considering that it is of a suitable size and conspicuously
marked; that it goes about fearlessly in the daytime and is the most
abundant animal, the small cavy excepted, in that sterile country. But
whether the Eagles _succeed_ in their attacks on it is a very different
matter. The probability is that when an Eagle, incited by the pangs of
hunger, commits so great a mistake as to attack a skunk, the pestilent
fluid, which has the same terribly burning and nauseating effects on the
lower animals as on man, very quickly makes it abandon the contest. It
is certain that pumas make the same mistake as the Eagles do, for in
some that are caught the fur smells strongly of skunk. It might be said
that the fact that many Eagles smell of skunk serves to show that they
do feed on them, for otherwise they would learn by experience to avoid
so dangerous an animal, and the smell of a first encounter would soon
wear off. I do not think that hungry birds of prey, in a barren country
like Patagonia, would learn from one repulse, or even from several,
the fruitlessness and danger of such attacks; while the smell is so
marvellously persistent that one or two such attacks a year on the part
of each Eagle would be enough to account for the smell on so many birds.
If skunks could be easily conquered by Eagles, they would not be so
numerous or so neglectful of their safety as we find them.
A fine example of this bird was brought alive from the Argentine
Republic to England by Mr. E. W. Goodlake in 1863, and lived for several
years in the Zoological Society's Gardens.