Dislike to Griffon Vultures 257 
1 may mention here that although I have climbed to so 
many nests I have never yet pulled a trigger at a Golden Eagle. 
Naturally enough I have had them close to me any number of 
times. 
In southern Spain they are curiously local, so much so that 
writing in 1874 Colonel Irby said that he had never seen one. 
Some years later I found them nesting sparsely in the great sand- 
stone cliffs of western Andalucia and showed Colonel Irby two sites, 
but it was not until I pushed my expeditions into the limestone 
mountains which form the western and southern spurs of the 
Sierra Nevada that I made close acquaintance with them. On two 
occasions only have I seen them in Morocco and I know of a nest 
on that side of the Straits. 
It is difficult to account for the marked preference of the Golden 
Eagle for the limestone country beyond the fact that they seem 
to have a supreme dislike for Griffon Vultures and, so far as my 
personal observations go, never tolerate them near their nests. 
Since all the larger cliffs in the sandstone country are tenanted 
by Griffons, this may be one of the reasons. Again, owing to the 
normal geological formations of the limestone country, there are 
usually fewer caverns and fissures in any one cliff than amid the 
sandstone, and hence the Griffons nesting there are, as a rule, more 
generally distributed since they have not the local facilities for 
living in big colonies which exist in some of the sandstone crags. 
For although Golden Eagles most undoubtedly do drive away any 
odd pairs of Griffons which may attempt to occupy their own 
particular cliff, | do not think they would attempt to oust a whole 
colony. There is however yet another possible reason for the 
Golden Eagles restricting themselves mainly to the limestone 
country. The nearly allied species, the White-shouldered Eagle, 
which frequents the wooded hillsides and valleys of the lower 
sandstone country, as also do two other tree-nesting Eagles, are 
