Snake Eagles and their Prey 187 
winter but any unusual rainfall and consequent flooding of the 
lower districts at once brings them to light. Thus during the very 
wet winter of 1907-8 I saw daily in December big Ocellated Civande: 
no longer of.a brilliant metallic green with azure-spotted sides, as 
in the spring and summer months, but of a dull dirty brown and 
often caked in mud, clear proof both that they had been roused 
from their lairs by the inrush of water and also of the effect 
which an absence of sunlight has upon the hue of these vividly 
coloured reptiles. 
On 28 December when lying up for Wild Geese on a promon- 
tory amid the waters of a rising /aguna, | saw several big lizards 
and snakes basking on the sunny and sheltered side of the lentiscus 
bushes around me. They were in a semi-torpid state. But I was 
most particularly struck by the innate spirit of self-preservation, 
which under such unexpected and, likely enough, novel conditions 
induced them one and all to select places where projecting bough 
or pendent streamer of sarsaparilla afforded them protection from 
the sudden attack of Eagle, Buzzard or Harrier. With the return 
of spring and the general awakening of reptile life innumerable 
raptorial birds come streaming up from the African continent and 
the sight of them as they pass, either singly or in small scattered 
parties, almost continuously for days at a time, when the wind suits 
their purpose, makes one wonder where they can find sufficient food. 
The nest of the Snake Eagle is remarkably small for so large 
a bird. Like all the raptores, when conditions are favourable it 
occupies the same sites year after year, but, unlike most of them, 
owing to the peculiar situations it selects, it cannot always reckon 
upon finding the remains of a last year’s nest upon which to build 
a fresh one. The vast majority of nests I have visited, probably 
over go per cent., have been placed far out along an horizontal or 
even on a pendent branch of a cork-oak tree and it is obvious that 
nests in such situations are peculiarly liable to be destroyed by 
