12 AQUILA CHRYSAETUS. 



turn. The very clean condition in which the eggs are mostly found, 

 even when just hatcliing, shows that she can scarcely have left the 

 nest since they were laid ; and yet it is not till there are young ones 

 that much food is seen lying about. So closely does she sit when 

 " closking/^ that it is only the sight of a man's eye, or a bit of stick 

 or stone about her ears, that will make her fly off; but when she does 

 so, it is generally in considerable alarm, and perhaps with a low cry, 

 taking care to appear no more till her enemies have retired. I have 

 heard of an old man, and another time of a woman, being attacked by 

 the birds near a nest ; and a person told me that once, Avhen quite 

 alone, and in some difficulty on a very ticklish rock, the Eagles tried 

 to knock him off with their wings. Such a thing never occurred to 

 myself; and from conversations with persons who have been at scores 

 of nests in former days, I am disposed to believe it is a rare event. 

 When the eggs are taken, I have never heard of a second laying that 

 year. More than one supposed instance of their being removed to 

 another spot, in the claws of the parents, has come under my notice ; 

 but the propensities of Hooded Crows, and other sources of error, 

 make me hesitate to consider these accounts as proved. 



There are from one to three eggs in a nest ; I do not know of an 

 instance of four ; but two is the usual and proper number. Last year 

 I had three eggs, all fertile and nearly ready to hatch, out of one nest ; 

 and Mr. Salmon mentions that he knew of three young ones in a nest 

 in Orkney [Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 1. vol. v. p. 423]. In all other 

 cases where I have heard of three eggs, one was addled ; and it was 

 thus in a nest where I found two young ones with a rotten egg. 

 This was white, whilst one at least of its fellows had been highly 

 coloured ; but pure- white eggs are not always bad, as I know for 

 certain in two instances. One infatuated Eagle I found sitting on a 

 solitary egg, which, though addled, had some colour on it. The eggs 

 are laid at intervals of a few days, and are hatched in the same order. 

 In two pairs, I know which of the eggs was hatching first. Of the 

 pair figured by Mr. Hewitson [Eggs B. B. ed. 3. pi. iii.], the one 

 represented by the uppermost figure had already been chipped, whilst 

 the other had not nearly arrived at the same condition. In another 

 pair, an egg, crowded with faint freckles, was hatched certainly several 

 days before its companion, a purely white one, would have been. 

 There is often a remarkable difference, and yet a family likeness, in 

 twin eggs. Again, in an undisturbed eyrie, where you find pale eggs 

 one year, you may expect to find them still pale the next. The healthy 

 triplet I have above spoken of were all very pale, and they came out 

 of the nest which had the white and the freckled egg the year before. 



