ave all the esteem and friendship for Charley that any eagle
has a right to expect; but I can't admit the least impressiveness in his
walk. An eagle's feet are not meant to walk with, but to grab things. An
eagle's walk betrays a lamentable bandy-leggedness, and his toe-nails
click awkwardly against the ground. This makes him plant his feet
gingerly and lift them quickly, so that worthy old ladies suppose him to
be afflicted with lameness or bunions, an opinion which disgusts the
bird, as you may observe for yourself; for you will never find an eagle
in these Gardens submitting himself to be fondled by an old lady
visitor. It is by way of repudiating any suggestion of bunions that the
eagle adopts a raffish, off-hand, chickaleary sort of roll in the gait,
so that altogether, especially as viewed from behind, a walking eagle
has an appearance of perpetually knocking 'em in the Old Kent Road. On
Charley's next birthday I shall present him, I think, with a proper
pearly suit, with kicksies cut saucy over the trotters, and an artful
fakement down the side, if the Society will allow me.

[Illustration: A PASSING SNACK.]

[Illustration: DINNER AHOY!]

There is nothing in the world that pleases an eagle better at
dinner-time than a prime piece of cat. Charley tells me that, upon the
whole, he prefers a good, plump, mouse-fed tabby; he adds that he never
yet heard of a tame eagle being kept at a sausage shop, though he would
like a situation of that sort himself, very much. The stoop of a free
eagle as it takes a living victim is, no doubt, a fine thing, except for
the victim; but the grabbing of cut-up food here in captivity is merely
comic. The eagle, with his Whitechapel lurch, makes for the morsel and
takes it in his stride; then he stands on it in a manner somehow
suggesting pattens, and pecks away at the hair--if, luckily, he has
secured a furry piece. I am not intimate with any eagle but Charley, but
I am very friendly with all of them--golden, tawny, white-tailed, and
the rest, with their scowls and their odd winks--all but one other of
the wedge-tailers, who stays for ever at the top of the tree trunk and
looks out westward, trying to distinguish the cats in the gardens of St.
John's Wood; he is reserved as well as uppish, and I don't know him to
speak to.

[Illustration: UNCIVIL BAWLINGS.]

I am pretty intimate with many of the owls. The owl I know least is a
little Scops owl, kept alone in the insect-house. He h