141 j\Ir. A. Hume on Indian Ornithology. 



trickling from above had (in a way trickling water often does) 

 worn a deep recess into the face of the cliff, about a third of the 

 way down. Above and below it had merely grooved the sur- 

 face broadly, but here (finding a softer bed, I suppose) it had worn 

 in a recess some five feet high and three feet deep and broad. 

 The bottom of this recess sloped downw^ards ; but the birds, by 

 using branches with large twiggy extremities, had built up a 

 level platform that projected some two feet beyond the face of 

 the cliff. It was a great mass of sticks fully half a ton in 

 weight, and on this platform (with only her head visible from 

 where we stood at the water^s edge) an old female Eagle sat in 

 state. This was on Christmas-day ! It is not many holidays a 

 really working official gets in India, or at least can afford to give 

 himself; and part of mine are generally spent in the open air, 

 gun in hand. 



At the foot of the cliffs is a talus of rough blocks of clay that 

 it will take many a flood yet to amalgamate; and up this I 

 crept until I was only about sixty feet below the nest. Here, 

 however, I could see nothing of the bird; I shouted and kicked 

 the cliff, the men below screamed, threw fragments of kunker 

 (one of which very nearly blinded me), and by various signs 

 attempted to indicate to Mrs. Bonelli that a change of locahty 

 was desirable. Serenely sublime in the discharge of her maternal 

 duties, that lady took no notice whatsoever of the uproar below. 

 Accustomed to the passage of noisy boat-crews, and, like some 

 other sovereigns who sit calmly aloft, unable to realize that 

 it is really against their sacred selves that the mob beneath is 

 howling, the eagle never moved. Beaten at our first move, we 

 changed our plan; I crept down the talus and sent up a man to 

 throw down dust and small pieces of earth (we were afraid of 

 breaking the eggs), in the hopes of driving her off the nest. 

 Luckily the very first piece of earth hit her; then came a shower 

 of sand; and concluding, I suppose, that the cliff was (as it 

 often does) about to fall, she flew off the nest with a rapid 

 swoop. Bang, bang, both barrels, 12 bore. No. 3, green car- 

 tridge, full in the chest (as the body showed when we skinned it); 

 and yet, with a half fall, like a tumbler-pigeon, through some 

 fifteen or twenty feet, she recovered herself and swooped away 



