MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 509 



In August or September I thought I should like to get rid of these eagles, as 

 I was expecting my trained hawks from the Punjab, and intended doing a good 

 deal of hawking in the country round. I was afraid of the Bonelli's interfer- 

 ing with my hawks, as these eagles will invariably go for any hawks which they 

 have seen kill anything, no matter how far off, to rob them. There is danger 

 of their killing a trained hawk if tbey surprise it when busy with its quarry, 

 aai a much greater danger of the trained hawk bolting clean away out of sight 

 a ad being lost, on the suddsn close appearance of an eagle and particularly 

 Bonelli's eagle. 



As I did not want to kill the Bhuj eagles, I set one of my falconers who 

 arrived ahead of the others to catch them, intending to let them go as soon as 

 the hawking season was over. 



Up to this time I had regularly seen one pair of Bonelli's eagles over the fort 

 and never any others. 



The falconer soon caught the female which was a very handsome one with a 

 snow white breast except for some marking on it. To my great surprise two 

 days later there was again a pair over the fort at 5 p.m. as before. The 

 following day I went out with my man and he caught the male (in the presence 

 of the new female). A few days later there was again a pair, who appeared 

 daily as regularly as the original pair had done, but only for 2 or 3 days, when 

 by an accident both mine escaped, and went straight back to the fort. After 

 this I used often, though not daily any more, to see a pair of these eagles over 

 the fort, but never more than a pair. They stayed much more on the other 

 side of the fort now, and I suppose that it must have been the original 

 pair again, rather scared after having been caught. The new pair had either 

 gone off of their own accord on the return of the old pair, or by a little 

 gentle persuasion, though I never saw any quarrel. 



I shot a very fine young rufous coloured Bonelli when ov.t hawking 5 miles 

 from Bhuj in January 1905. On another occasion we were flying a young 

 peregrine (Falco pereyrinus) at a houbara (Houbara macqueen-i) for the first time. 

 She went apparently Very keenly at it, knocked a lot of feathers out of it, 

 and then left it, rather to my surprise. The houbara went on a bit sick, 

 when suddenly I saw a big female Bonelli coming along at a good height, 

 till she was perpendicularly over the houbara, when she turned, stooped 

 straight down and killed it. She flew off as I came up, so I got the houbara 

 after all. 



I have seen a great many different kinds of birds of prey about the old 

 fort at Bhuj and I suppose there is hardly another place where they show 

 off themselves and their flying powers better. Ordinarily the only chancts one 

 has of observing the flying capabilities of hawks and falcons, are when 

 one of them happens to chase some bird near you out shooting or riding, 

 when you probably only see the hawk for a few minutes or even seconds and 

 rarely more than one at a time. But at Bhuj you can often watch two or three 

 falcons playing about together in the wind, stooping at each other and chasing 



