The Oologists' Record, March i, 1922. 



range well behind it. South, stretched the Messouria, a wide plain 

 intersecting the island, whilst east and west the numerous spurs of 

 the range on which we stood showed clear and distinct for many miles. 



Our guide, having had our mission explained to him, left us 

 admiring the wonders surrounding us and disappeared over a 

 precipice near by, when, after half-an-hour's absence, he returned 

 with a vulture's &^^. This, he informed us, had been difficult to 

 obtain and dissuaded me from accompanying him, as the climb 

 could not be attempted in boots, his own being slung around his 

 neck. It happened a yeox afterwards that I met this same man and 

 made him take me to the vulture's eyrie from which he had got his 

 egg and, except for a nasty bit of rock about 40 feet high, I found 

 the climb a very simple one, but I attacked it from below. 



The nest was composed of a few small twigs, also a single fir- 

 branch with cone attached and lined with a little coarse grass. This 

 latter we watched the birds bringing in, which they did with their 

 feet only, on a previous occasion when we misjudged the date for 

 the nest being ready for the egg. Lying quietly below the eyrie, 

 we had a splendid opportunity to witness the behaviour of the 

 vultures circling above the mountain and constantly descending 

 with long vol-planes, bringing small quantities of nesting material. 

 After depositing it in the nest they would stand close together and 

 rub noses, or rather beaks, at the same time gurgling and chattering 

 in a very weird manner. 



I photographed a generaT"view of the mountain, the eyrie lying 

 within the huge cleft shghtly to the right of the monastery below. 

 I was lately shown two eggs of this vulture, taken in season 1913, 

 from one nest on the same range of mountains, and did not doubt 

 the accuracy of this statement. I have seen as many as three eggs 

 from a nest of the White-tailed Eagle, Haliaetus albicilla, more 

 than once, and am aware that many other species of birds often add 

 to the number of eggs usually laid in a normal sitting. On another 

 day, whilst in the same locality but a few miles further westwards, 

 I had a close view of a Bearded Vulture or Lammergeier, Ossifragus 

 barbatiis, as it flew over a pass to a valley below, and was thus 

 enabled to record an interesting species, new to the Ornithology of 

 Cyprus. Although I subsequently searched for this bird in other 

 likel)' parts of the island I did not succeed in finding it again, and I 

 conclude this specimen must have returned to the Taurus mountains 

 from whence it probably came, I hope I may meet with this 



