Favourite Nesting Stations 315 
is well-known, nearly ali raptorial birds succumb to cramp if taken 
when too young), I went again to see it. But the nest was empty! 
After a careful search all around I could only find a second empty 
nest almost exactly similar and similarly placed, less than 20 yards 
distant from the first, and likewise a third undoubted resort of Eagle 
Owls. It was quite clear that the old birds, resenting my intrusion 
in the first instance, had moved their young to a place of safety, 
and so it happily escaped me. I learned however from this experience 
that the popular ideas of Eagle Owls nesting in stupendous cliffs or 
inaccessible caverns was a myth. Since then I have come across 
and closely watched very many pairs of Eagle Owls and have found 
numerous nests, many of which I have visited and in hardly a single 
instance has a nest been in a cliff where a rope was a necessity in 
order to reach it. The birds, in fact, look for immunity to the vast 
extent of the wild country they inhabit and in the rough nature of 
the ground. 
The favourite locality for a nest would seem to be on a shelf 
or terrace on the face of a crag some 10 to 50 ft. from the ground 
where genista heath or cistus grows in profusion and where, on the 
soft soil between the shrubs and the face of the cliff, the earthy nest 
is excavated sometimes 3 ins. in depth and the egys laid. The 
eggs, usually two in number are pure white and of the size of a 
fowl’s and nearly globular in shape. The picture is of a nest on 
a terrace amid some crags about 60 ft. high, easily reached from 
the top of the cliff and not more than 15 ft. from the ground. 
The year following my first introduction to the young of the 
Eagle Owl I once again visited the cliff where I had found the 
empty Eagle Owl’s nest, formerly tenanted by Bonelli’s Eagle. 
This was in a small cavern situated about 20 ft. from the summit 
on the face of a crag 80 or go ft. in height. A picture of this crag 
is given in the chapter on Bonelli's Eagle on p. 334. A second 
322 
showing the profile of the cliff will be found on p. further on in 
