294 Mr. W. H. Simpson's Ornithological Notes 



about iu the air at a great height, sometimes appearing to make 

 a summerset backwards (reversing the action of the tumbler), 

 in the excess of their indignation against the robbers who were 

 looking at them. 



The first nest which we discovered in this line of precipices 

 most probably belonged to the pair of Sea Eagles that haunted the 

 upper lake. There were several of these birds about, but the 

 others were mostly immature ones in the dark plumage. They 

 fly low over the water with that lumbering heavy flight peculiar 

 to the species. If they come near the grand army of ducks, 

 all the outlying pickets are called in, and sometimes a general 

 retreat takes place, but always in order and without much 

 appearance of alarm. It is not to be supposed that all the birds 

 of this species we see here are breeding; but there are one or 

 two undoubted eyries in the district, and these chiefly in the 

 enormous trees that rear their heads above the almost impene- 

 trable jungles near the lakes of Agrinion and the embouchure 

 of the Phidaris. In the latter place there is one to which Dr. 

 Kriiper ascended in the month of May 1859. It was in a good 

 state of repair, but contained no young, — nothing living, in fact, 

 but a few sparrows that had built their nests with true passerine 

 impudence in the many snug little berths which its vast circum- 

 ference afforded. We took this to be an indication that the esta- 

 blishment was not occupied, when, just as the Doctor was coming 

 down, a great black Eagle flew over our heads. A Golden Eagle ! 

 said we all. But our Italian solved the question by putting some 

 shot into him, as he passed again, when he proved to be Aquila 

 albicilla, in the plumage of the second year : the sex I forget. 

 Whether the Eagle inherited this establishment from his deceased 

 ancestors, or had found it and put it into tenantable repair, is a 

 fact we shall never ascertain : this much is probable, that he 

 looked upon it as his habitation, that he intended to get mated, 

 and that in the course of a year or two more, if an untimely 

 fate had not befallen him, he would have taken his share in the 

 production of a pair of spotless eggs, for the benefit of the next 

 oologist who should have the luck to find the nest and the pluck 

 to ascend to it. 



In the recesses of these marshy forests, where the rate of 



