fearlessness of him.  But I was not well assured of the reasons for the trustfulness and admiration of the smaller birds for the fierce-looking fellow who spends most of his time fishing, until direct and conclusive evidence was forthcoming.  Two days of rough weather, and the blue bay had become discoloured with mud churned up by the sea, and the eagle found fishing poor and unremunerative sport.  Even his keen eyesight could not distinguish in the murky water the coming and going of the fish. just below the house is a small area of partly cleared flat, and there we saw the brave fellow roaming and scooping about with more than usual interest in the affairs of dry land.  At this time of year green snakes are fairly plentiful.  Harmless and handsome, they prey upon small birds and frogs, and the eagle had abandoned his patrol of the sad-hued water to take toll of the snakes.  After a graceful swoop down to the tips of a low-growing bush, he alighted on the dead branch of a bloodwood 150 yards or so away, and, with the help of a telescope, his occupation was revealed—­he was greedily tearing to pieces a wriggling snake, gulping it in three-quarter-yard lengths.  Here was the reason for the trustfulness and respect of the little birds.  The eagle was destroying the chief bugbear of their existence—­the sneaking greeny-yellowy murderer of their kind and eater of their eggs, whose colour and form so harmonises with leaves and thin branches that he constantly evades the sharpest-eyed of them all, and squeezes out their lives and swallows them whole.  But the big red detective could see the vile thing 50 and even 100 yards away, and once seen—­well, one enemy the less.  Briskly stropping his beak on the branch of the tree on which he rested, and setting his breast plumage in order, much as one might shake a crumb from his waistcoat, the eagle adjusted his searchlights and sat motionless.  In five minutes a slight jerk of the neck indicated a successful observation, and he soared out, wheeled like a flash, and half turning on his side, hustled down in the foliage of a tall wattle and back again to his perch.  Another snake was crumpled up in his talons, and he devoured it in writhing, twirling pieces.  The telescope gave unique advantage during this entertainment, one of the tragedies of Nature, or rather the lawful execution of a designing and crafty criminal.  Within ten minutes the performance was repeated for the third time, and then either the supply of snakes ran out or the bird was satisfied.  He shrewdly glanced this way and that, craning and twisting his neck, and seeming to adjust the lenses of his eyes for near and distant observation.  No movement among the leaves seemed to escape him.  Two yards and a half or perhaps three yards of live snakes constituted a repast.  At any rate, after twenty minutes’ passive watchfulness, he sailed up over the trees and away in the direction of his home in the socialistic community of the shining calornis.