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TWELETH DAY, 199 
to see whether its plumage would be light or dark; and indeed 
the little eagle did not keep me waiting long, for I suddenly 
heard its melodious notes on my right. The sound made by 
the Pygmy Eagle is more than a call, for one might really 
say that the consecutive and very different notes which it 
utters amount to a short song; while the bird itself is, in my 
opinion, undoubtedly the most interesting and least known of 
all our raptorial species, and the one which offers to our ever- 
combative ornithologists the greatest field for discussion. 
Cautiously looking in the direction whence the notes of 
the eagle proceeded, I saw the splendid male, in its pale 
glistening plumage, sitting bolt upright on a dead branch, 
and unfortunately fired at it, although it was rather too far 
off, for though it fell to the ground severely wounded, it 
fluttered off among the thick undergrowth, where I soon lost 
sight of it; and the most careful search proving fruitless, my 
hopes of adding to our collection a paired couple of Pygmy 
Eagles in different plumages were quite frustrated. 
Frightened by the last shots, the inhabitants of this in- 
teresting colony were flying about in the wildest disorder, 
and among them I noticed a pair of Black Storks, which had 
set up their abode in the midst of these birds of prey, but had 
not yet finished building. 
As there seemed, for the present, to be no more chance of 
doing any good in the outskirts of the wood, I pushed further 
into it, and soon found a medium-sized nest on the upper 
branches of a young oak, and from it there dashed out a dark- 
coloured hawk while I was still some distance off. The bird 
disappeared so rapidly that I did not recognize it, and I 
therefore concealed myself behind a tree to await its return. 
In a few minutes it came back, approaching through the trees 
close to the ground, and the owner of the nest, falling to my 
shot, lay in its death-struggle on the grass, and proved to be 
an exceedingly handsome Goshawk. 
