The eagle in the picture adapted by JRRT (also shown in this book) stands in an identical pose to the one in JRRT's painting, showing that he based the Eagle's appearance on a Golden Eagle.Tolkien adapted the eagle, with stylized feathers and brighter colours, from a picture of an immature Golden Eagle in T. A. Coward's The Birds of the British Isles and Their Eggs (first series, first published 1919 ), necessarily omitting the eagle's dead prey.
J. R. R. Tolkien Artist and Illustrator by Hammond and Scull.
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