342 Bonelli's Eagle 
got my party together we proceeded to the top of the cliff, whence 
it was but a short drop to the nest, easy enough with a rope. 
This nest was a big structure of sticks, probably the remains of 
the Golden Eagles’ tenancy supplemented by the Ravens’ improve- 
ments, and was lined with freshly-cut branches from the palmetto 
bushes and some cork-tree boughs. 
It contained but a single egg of the usual rounded shape of 
Eagle's eggs, well coloured with rufous markings at the larger 
end. For a moment I hesitated whether I should take the egg 
or leave it until a second was laid. Eventually, I decided to take 
it and replaced it with a tame goose’s egg which I had with me 
in view of such emergencies. 
I should mention here that it is a good plan always to carry 
a couple of fowl’s eggs when on birdsnesting expeditions so that in 
the event of it being necessary to revisit a nest, they may be left 
in it in place of those abstracted, by which means the old_ bird 
may be induced to continue sitting. For such a purpose, I usually 
carry large fowl’s eggs but on this occasion chanced to have a 
goose’s, which had been laid by a tame goose which I used as 
a call-bird when driving Wild Geese during the winter months. 
It was somewhat larger than Bonelli’s egg and of course of a 
totally different shape, since Geese, both wild and domesticated, 
lay somewhat elongated eggs pointed at both ends, whereas Eagles 
lay rounded eggs, with one end larger than the other. 
Upon blowing the Eagle’s egg I found it to be considerably 
incubated, a proof that there was no chance of a second egg being 
laid. It seemed rather unkind to the Eagles to leave them thus 
engaged in the fruitless task of endeavouring to hatch off a tame 
goose’s egg, but as I did not blow the Eagle's until | had returned 
to our horses, some hundreds of feet below the nest, I was 
physically incapable of returning to it to remove the goose'’s egg. 
It chanced that some weeks later | rode past the cliff with 
