A Nest in a Marsh 199 
in my note-book. Thirty-three years have elapsed since | com- 
mitted this wicked murder and all I can urge in extenuation of it 
is that in spite of numerous opportunities since then | have never 
again killed a White-shouldered Eagle. 
Upon climbing up to the nest it was no easy matter to look 
into it, since it overhung the summit of the alder on all sides. 
Eventually I succeeded and found it contained a single white egg, 
smaller than a Marsh Harrier’s. This, when I came to_ blow it, 
proved to be yolkless and of abnormal thickness and roughness of 
shell. As the old bird was sitting so close on this, I have no 
doubt that her nest had been robbed of the eggs or young some 
time before and that this abnormal egg had been left or been laid 
subsequently. 
The nest was a great pile of big sticks and boughs and, was 
curiously enough, lined with goat’s hair, lambswool and feathers, a 
fact I duly noted at the time, and, naturally enough, imagined to be 
in accordance with the usual custom of this species. The old bird, 
a female, was in the uniform dark brown plumage—not the black— 
and measured 34 in. in length, with a span across the wings of 
80 in., her weight being 8 Ib. 
Two years later I heard from Colonel Irby that he had visited 
this same nest in 1873 and had watched a pair of Black Vultures 
repairing and relining it at the end of February. Colonel Irby 
further told me how, in 1874, the year before my visit, a pair of 
White-shouldered Eagles had occupied this nest and had relined it 
with fresh green boughs, in accordance with their usual custom ; the 
nest when he saw it, contained no eggs. 
The reason of this we learned from our Spanish attendant, 
Juan Palo, a famous old local sportsman well known to successive 
shooting parties from the Rock between 1869 and 1879. He 
told us how in this same year he had taken three eggs from 
this nest, and that one of them was abnormally small and resembled 
