GOLDEN EAGLE 297 



also some moss and eagle down." New nests are sometimes quite 

 small, 2y2 to 3 feet in diameter and 18 inches high, but as they are 

 added to from year to year they become quite bulky, 5 or 6 feet in 

 diameter and 4 or 5 feet high. 



In San Diego County a majority of the nests are on cliffs. While 

 I was visiting James B. Dixon, at Escondido, he showed me a beau- 

 tiful series of eggs that he had taken in that vicinity and pointed out 

 some of the localities on rough, rocky mountains, where he had found 

 the eagles nesting for many years. He (1911) says that each pair of 

 birds has its own nesting and hunting range, from which others are 

 driven out ; but they have a peculiar habit of stealing materials from 

 their neighbor's nest, which often results in a fight "over their steal- 

 ings, diving and circling in the air and sometimes clashing together 

 and falling thus several feet before breaking away from each other." 

 He says further: "I have never yet found a nest that did not have 

 some dagger leaves in it, and in some places the birds must have 

 carried them for some distance. In other instances, pepper and 

 eucalyptus leaves were used profusely in lining and were carried 

 several miles as there were neither of these trees growing close by. 

 The odor from either of these leaves is distasteful to bugs and lice 

 of all kinds, and I think this the reason they took such pains to secure 

 it when there was plenty of other nesting material close by." 



Wilson C. Hanna (1930) has made some interesting observations on 

 nest building activities, which begin in January in southern Cali- 

 fornia. He says of one bird : 



This bird would work pretty fast at nest building, as the following record 

 indicates: 4 : 16 p. m., bird observed going to nest with stick in beak; 4: 17, left 

 nest ; 4 : 19, retiirned to nest ; 4 : 19i/^, left nest ; 4 : 22, sailed by nest but did not 

 go to it ; 4 : 23, returned from the south with such a large piece of brush that 

 it was hard to manage; 4: 23i^, left nest; 4: 24V2, returned to nest, descending 

 from high above it ; 4 : 26, left nest ; 4 : 27, returned with stick ; 4 : 29, left nest ; 

 4 : 30, returned to nest from the north with stick ; 4 : 31, left nest ; 4 : 33, re- 

 turned from the south over the nest and descended to it from the north ; 4 : 37, 

 left nest ; 4 : 47, sailed over nest and then on out of sight in the distance. 



Mr. Ray writes to me : "While engaged in nest building the eagles 

 are seldom in evidence as tliey sail along close to the ground. On one 

 occasion Rose Carolyn Ray noted a bird curving low over a hilltop 

 and then beneath a huge oak, where, after rising straight up to a 

 lofty bough, it placed the material it was carrying for the repair of 

 the old nest which it later occupied. In leaving the tree the bird 

 departed in the same unobtrusive manner in which it came." 



If the first set of eggs is taken from an eagle's nest, the bird will 

 often, but not always, lay a second set about a month later, some- 

 times in the same nest and sometimes in an alternate nest. The same 

 nest may be used for many years in succession, but oftener the birds 



83561—37 20 



