EAGLE KIDNAPS A BABY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2286, 7 June 1921, Page 4

EAGLE KIDNAPS A BABY.

SECRET OF DISAPPEARANCE

SCOTTISH TRAGEDY RE-

VEALED.

A lonely Scotch mountain has just partly revealed the secret of the disappearance, seven years ago, of a two-year-old baby from the Croft of Doerlethen.

The child’s home was at the foot of the JVlither Tap, of Benachie, the highest mountain in Central Aberdeenshire. For six weeks police and volunteers- searched over a radius* of 30 miles, but without result, and the popular belief was that the child had been kidnapped by gipsies, or carried away by an eagle.

Recently, however, the charred skeleton ’of the body was found among some burned undergrowth on the hillside, about two miles from the cottage from which it had disappeared. If the child walked to the spot it would have been necessary for it to have climbed through a thick wood and a belt of heather five feet high. The discovery was made by a contractor examining the hill, with a view of salving timber damaged by the fire, which swept the district last rear. -

So sequestered is the spot that added credence is given to the theory that the baby was carried away by an eagle while at play in the farmyard.

It was too young to wander two miles up a steep hillside that was deeply covered with undergrowth.

There have been several instances in recent years of babies being carried away by eagles in the Alps and Pyrenees. On several occasions ajso the bones of children have been found in eagles’ nests. In 1904 the eighteen-months-old daughter of a Sutherland crofter living at Inversion was seized while playing in a field. Some hours later the terribly mangled body was found on the crest of a neighbouring hill. One hand was clutching a bunch of eagle’s feathers. Before the searchers could stop the agonised mother, she caught sight of her baby’s mutilated face and fell unconscious.

An authority on the golden eagle says that this bird would be quite capable of carrying off a child of two years. An eagle can quite easily carry a full-grown hare.