410 The Bearded Vulture 
Bearded Vulture is very richly coloured ; in brilliant sunlight the 
bright tawny throat and underparts assume a veritable golden hue, 
far more so than do the pale tawny feathers on the nape of the 
Golden Eagle whence the latter derives its somewhat imaginative 
name. This golden colour of the Bearded Vulture is well-known 
to all the goatherds and mountain-dwellers in Spain, who invariably 
describe the birds as colorado, ‘‘ reddish” in contra-distinction to the 
Griffon Vulture of fulvous appearance. As already mentioned, 
many Anglo-English sportsmen style the bird Golden Eagle and 
the famous traveller James Bruce, who met with it in the highest 
mountain north of Gondar in Abyssinia so far back as 1770 and 
figured it in his book published in 1790, did the same. It there- 
fore seems likely enough that the inhabitants of the mountainous 
districts of mid-Europe may have likewise described the big bird 
of prey which was credited with sinister intentions on their infants 
as a Golden Eagle. 
My first introduction to Bearded Vultures was of a very formal 
nature and led to nothing. A pair frequented some high hills a 
day's journey from Gibraltar and annually nested in a cavern in a 
low cliff at the top of a steep acclivity. I was in those days 
unaware of their very early nesting habits and in consequence 
never sought for the nest at the proper time of year. 
This pair have long since left the locality. Ten years passed 
before I once again came across them, in a big sierra some ten 
miles west of the first site. Here they nested undisturbed for some 
years using two alternative sites, one in a small cavern only a few 
hundred feet above a goatherd’s house and the other in a cavern 
very nearly the same in shape several hundred feet higher up the 
cliffs. Photographs of both these sites appear in Colonel Irby’s 
book. It is over twelve years since they in turn abandoned this 
range of hills and went off without leaving an address. 
The Bearded Vulture is, as I have said, a very early nester. | 
