Used in Falconry in Asia 2% 
Like many other people whose education in birds had been 
limited to the so-called British list, I had never even heard 
of its existence until I first went to Spain in 1874. But I had 
not been many days at Gibraltar before I noticed a pair of Eagles 
which frequented and, I am happy to say, still frequent, the great 
cliffs on its eastern side, and thus made the acquaintance of a 
species which hitherto had been beyond my very limited scope 
of bird-knowledge. But in addition to the natural interest awakened 
by thus finding myself for the first time in my life in a position 
to watch and learn something of the habits of Eagles, as a falconer 
and the son of a falconer I was intensely attracted by Bonelli’s 
Eagle when I learned that it was the same species which the 
Afghans employ for hawking small deer. For various reasons the 
larger Eagles have been found to be unsuited for falconry, but there 
was a report that in Central Asia there was a medium-sized Eagle 
which was more tractable and this was none other than Bonelli’s. 
According to R. Thompson, Bonelli’s Eagle will take young deer 
and full-grown hares; and Allan Hume who quotes this in his 
book adds ‘I have myself seen it.” 
The pair of Eagles which had nested at the back of the 
Rock from time immemorial (for with Eagles as with a_well- 
established dynasty, there is no break or interlude in the line of 
autocrats of a definite area), until the advent of Bonelli, had 
rejoiced in the euphonious but ambiguous name of agweda de las 
rocas. To the alien English garrison they were likewise known 
as ‘Rock Eagles” a term which, as Colonel Irby truly remarks, 
was all-sufficient for those who would style a Buzzard a Bustard 
and vice versa. 
It may be readily imagined with what absorbing interest I set 
myself to watch these birds from a point of vantage at the top 
of the Rock. In those days the Signal Station was in charge 
of a Serjeant of the Royal Artillery who had, since he attained 
