332 Bonelli’s Eagle 
that elevated position, taken a keen interest in the Eagles and 
their nesting and kept notes of them. With the aid of one 
of the powerful telescopes which formed part of his signalman’s 
equipment I was enabled to watch the birds and thus receive 
my first lessons in the art of studying Eagles in their haunts. 
I also then first learned, from the Sergeant and Eagles combined, 
the mysteries of the alternative sites for nesting, adopted by 
raptorial birds. 
This particular pair of Bonelli’s Eagles has at least three, 
if not four, nesting sites on the face of the great precipice south 
of the Signal Station. One of these sites was in full view of 
the Signal Station Battery of those days. It happened that in 
the following February the Eagles selected this site for their nesting- 
place for 1875, and although I carefully reconnoitred it from both 
above and below, it was quite beyond my powers, at the time, to 
reach it. For to do so required a knowledge of cliff-work which 
I then lacked and further, not only an ample supply of ropes, 
but of assistants to work them which were. then, so far as | 
was concerned, unobtainable. There was moreover the ancient 
Garrison Order prohibiting the molestation of the wild birds on 
the Rock. I however argued to myself that there most assuredly 
must be other pairs of Bonellis Eagle nesting in the moun- 
tainous country north of Gibraltar and, during the course of an 
extended expedition later on in the spring, I actually located two 
pairs. Both were nesting in very big cliffs, over goo ft. high 
and in sites inaccessible without plenty of rope, which we did not 
possess. 
In the following year when riding out from the Rock I saw 
a pair on the wing but so obsessed was I at this time with the 
popular belief that Eagles only nested in stupendous cliffs that 
I did not endeavour to track them. Again, a year later when 
out with the Calpe Hounds I saw one of these Eagles, not far 
