Golden Eagles at Play 371 
with better effect than when a pair of Golden Eagles indulge in 
a little play around some great cliff, which they may possibly be 
prospecting with a view to nesting. After various beautiful 
circlings high overhead one will suddenly make a wider curve 
and swing downwards and inwards until it enters the shadow cast 
by the precipice. As it nears the cliff the great feathered legs 
are dropped and it alights with a lurch on some projection of rock 
adjacent to the proposed nesting place. For one moment it 
steadies itself with a few flaps of its huge wings and then folds 
them leisurely across its back. Soon the other bird will descend 
rapidly from aloft with a prodigious swoop which carries it on a 
downward curve far below the point where its mate is resting 
and before the eye can grasp what it is about, and without any 
apparent effort, the downward movement is changed into an 
upward sweep which carries it to the same spot as the other. 
For a few seconds there is a shrill bickering and mighty flapping 
of wings, quickly followed by first one and then the other hurling 
itself as it were into space, whence, with expanded wings, they 
rise buoyantly once again into the bright sunlight above the 
cliff and recommence their aerial evolutions. This have | seen 
at times, lying prone amid the rocks and sweet-smelling cistus in 
ereat cliffs above which the 
5 
some wild valley enclosed by the 
Eagles play. 
