198 THE NESTS AND EGGS OF BRITISH BIRDS. 



cliff was on the west coast of Skye. a precipice quite 

 six hundred feet high, partly a broken slope covered 

 with grass and other herbage, and partly crags which 

 fell shesr down almost like a wall. The nest was made 

 in a small fissure, beneath an overhanging piece of the 

 rock, and was quite inaccessible without the aid of a 

 rope. The nest of this Eagle is a massive bulky pile of 

 sticks and branches, generally well interwoven, and 

 lined with dry grass, dead fern leaves and lumps of 

 moss, and usually containing tufts of the mountain 

 plant Lusida sylvatica. As a rule this Eagle sits lightly, 

 and if the nest only contains eggs makes little or no 

 demonstration. That it ever attacks a human being at 

 the nest I for one do not believe. 



Range of egg colouration and measurement: 

 The eggs of the Golden Eagle are usually two in 

 number, sometimes three, occasionally only one.^ They 

 vary from dull white to very pale bluish-green in ground 

 colour, blotched, clouded, spotted, and freckled with 

 reddish-brown, and with underlying markings similar in 

 character of violet-gray. They vary considerably even 

 in the same nest, and it is the exception to find two 

 similarly marked eggs in the same clutch, and very 

 often one or two are much less richly coloured than the 

 rest. Sometimes the spots are pretty evenly distributed 

 over the entire surface, but always most numerous on 

 the larger end of the ^g^. Another variety is hand- 

 somely clouded and blotched with dark reddish-brown, 

 and with most of the space between the large markings 

 dusted with paler brown specks. Sometimes the gray 

 underlying markings are very numerous and large, at 

 other times they are small and few. Another type is 

 almost spotless, and either dirty white or pale bluish- 



^ Four eggs have been recorded as found in one nest, but this 

 must be an extremely exceptional circumstance. 



