A protracted Quest 313 
companion cried out ‘“ Eagle Owl over.” Neither he nor [ had 
ever in our lives seen one on the wing but the bird was unmistak- 
able. It was naturally a surprise to both of us to see a bird which 
we supposed to be nocturnal flying high across country in the 
brilliant sunshine, but later experiences showed me that this species 
would seem to have even less dislike to flying by day than has 
our own Short-eared Owl. 
Having seen the bird, the next point was how to find its nest. 
Here we were hopelessly at fault: year followed upon year, and 
although I repeatedly came across what I imagined to be old nests 
of Eagle Owls and unquestionably were places they habitually 
frequented, | was never rewarded by a sight of their eggs. In 
this I was not singular, for Colonel Irby has placed it on record 
in his “Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar” that, despite 
years of diligent search, he was never able to find their nests. 
Over and over again did I come across the old birds, generally sit- 
ting in some shady cavern in a sandstone crag, whence they would 
dash out on my approach. Once indeed I nearly succeeded in my 
quest in so far that I found a pair had taken possession of a cave 
which had previously been the nesting station of a Bonelli’s Eagle. 
They had cleared out the Eagle’s nest, sticks and all, and excavated 
a neat basin in the soft black earth forming the floor of the cavern. 
This depression was about 15 in. across and of the form and shape 
of a shallow circular dish. All around its edges was a neat frill 
of whitening bones of rabbits, rats and birds which had obviously 
once formed part of the “castings” or pellets of fur, feather and 
bone which all Owls and other raptorial birds reject the day 
following a meal. But the Eagle Owl never laid in the nest this 
year, possibly alarmed at my visit. 
It was not until exactly nineteen years after my first sight of 
one on the wing that I was to be permitted to accomplish the task 
I had set before myself. In April 1894 I was once again in the 
