140 FALCONID^. 



as late as April. The nest is usually placed on ledges of pre- 

 cipitous earthen or rocky cliffs, and in the plains I think 

 preferentially in the immediate neighbourhood of some large river 

 or jheel. I have repeatedly seen their nests in the high clay cliffs 

 of the Jumna or Chumbal in the Etawah District, and I found a 

 pair breeding in the ruined and cyclopean walls of the ancient 

 Togluckabad, south of Delhi. Many pairs were breeding in the 

 precipices of the Salt Range near the Mayo Mines when I last 

 visited these, and I found several of their riests in the rocky cliffs 

 overlooking the gorges of the Gaj and the Nurree Nai in the hills 

 dividing Sindh from Kelat. 



Occasionally, however, they build on trees ; and I found a nest 

 containing a single egg in a large peep ul- tree near Bhurtpore. 



The nest (as 1 said before, commonly placed on some convenient 

 ledge or suitable recess in the cliff's face) is very large, from 4 to 

 6 feet in diameter, and is composed of thickish and moderate-sized 

 sticks, varying from 1*5 to 0*5 inch in diameter. The nest itself 

 varies in thickness from a few inches to a couple of feet, and being 

 always finished off to a level, when placed, as often happens, on a 

 more or less shelving declivity, is much thicker exteriorly than 

 interiorly. In the nests that I have examined branches and twigs 

 of various kinds of thorny acacias were the chief materials used. 

 In no nest that I have seen, not even in that one mentioned as 

 found on a peepul-tree, was there any very perceptible depression in 

 the interior of the nest. In the centre of the platform a circular 

 space, of some 18 inches in diameter, is commonly smoothed over 

 with a thin layer of green twigs ; and in the centre of this again 

 a smaller space of perhaps 1 foot in diameter is carefully carpeted 

 with green leaves, those of the neem, peepul, peeloo (Salvadora 

 persica}, and other trees being apparently indifferently made 

 use of. 



Normally, they lay two eggs, but I have once found three in a 

 nest, and on two occasions have known of a single, much-incubated 

 egg being met with. 



Elsewhere (in the ' Ibis ') I have thus described the taking of a 

 nest of this species : "About a mile above the confluence of the 

 clear blue waters of the Chumbal and the muddy stream of the 

 Jumna, in a range of bold perpendicular clay cliffs that rise more 

 than 100 feet above the dry-weather level of the former river, I 

 took my first nest of Bonelli's Eagle. In the rainy season water 

 trickling from above had, in a way trickling water often does, worn 

 a deep recess into the face of the cliff, about one third of the way 

 down. Above and below, it had merely broadly grooved the 

 surface, but here, finding a softer bed, I suppose, it had worn in 

 a recess some 5 feet high and 3 feet deep and broad. The bottom 

 of this recess sloped downwards, but the birds, by using branches 

 with large twic/yy extremities, had built up a level platform that 

 projected some 2 feet beyond the face of the cliff. It was a great 

 mass of sticks, fully half a ton in weight, and on this platform 

 (with only her head visible from where we stood at the water's 



