World Eagle Day: The Golden Eagle

The 18th March 2026 is World Eagle Day and to mark this, as well as the 350th anniversary of the year of the publication of Francis Willughby’s Ornithologia, this post will focus on part of the description of the Golden Eagle provided in Ornithologia.

Willughby wrote that the English countrymen called this bird simply the Eagle, without any epithet of distinction, as if it were the Eagle of Eagles. It came to England yearly to build its nest and breed, especially upon the high rocks of Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) in Caernarvonshire and the Peaks of Derbyshire.

In 1668, in the woodlands near the river Derwent in Derbyshire, the nest of a Golden Eagle was found. It was made of great sticks, with one end resting on the ledge of a rock and the other on two birch trees, upon which was a layer of rushes, and over them a layer of heath, and finally another layer of rushes. The nest was about two yards square (about 1.67 square metres), and had no hollow in it. In this nest lay one chick and an addled egg, and by them were: a lamb; a hare; and three Black Grouse. The young Eagle was as black as a Hobby, of the shape of a Goshawk, of almost the weight of a Goose, feathered down to the foot and had a white ring about its tail.

The Golden Eagle in Francis Willughby's Ornithologia

What Willughby and John Ray did not know was that the juvenile Golden Eagle has a white ring about its tail. They thought that it might have been another species and thus created two entries in Ornithologia for the Golden Eagle, one without a white ring and one with. Willughby and Ray recorded in Ornithologia that they had seen four more Golden Eagles with a white ring, three in the Royal Menagerie near the Tower of London and the fourth in St James Park near Westminster. They observed that these Eagles in size approached that of a Turkey.

They also observed that the beak was a horn (dark grey) colour and near the head it was straight, but hooked towards the end. The mouth was very wide when gaping and the inside of the mouth was of a flesh colour. The space from the nostrils to the eyes was bare of feathers. The feathers covering the head and neck were ferruginous (rust) coloured and not smooth and even, but rigid, narrow and lying at a distance one from another. The wings and tail were a dusky (greyish-brown) colour. The prime feathers had very firm, hard quills, which were very good as writing pens. The colour of the rest of the small feathers of the whole body was a dark ferruginous or chestnut (reddish-brown) colour, the bottoms of them being white. The tail was of a mean length, with a transverse white bar or ring. The legs were feathered down below the knees. The feet were yellowish and the talons black.

Juvenile Golden Eagle, 2009. NPS Photo / Kent Miller, CC-BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The description of the adult Golden Eagle in Ornithologia is primarily taken from the writings of Ulisse Aldrovandi and there is no suggestion that Willughby or Ray saw an adult Golden Eagle.

Further Reading: John Ray, Francis Willughby's Ornithologia, 1678, p.58-9, T1.

Author - Debbie Jordan, Middleton Hall Volunteer.

Please consider supporting Middleton Hall Trust by sending us a donation.