NISAETUS. 141 



edge) an old female Eagle sat in state. This was on Christmas 

 Day ! It is not many holidays a working official gets in India, OP 

 at least can afford to give himself, and part of mine are generally 

 spent in the open air, gun in hand. 



" At the foot of the cliffs is a talus of rough blocks of clay that 

 it will take many a flood yet to amalgamate, and up this I crept 

 until I was only about 60 feet below the nest. Here, however, I 

 could see nothing of the bird. I shouted and kicked the cliff, the 

 men below screamed, threw fragments of kuaker (one of which 

 nearly blinded me), and by various signs attempted to indicate to 

 Mrs. Bonelli that a change of locality was desirable. Serenely 

 sublime in the discharge of her maternal duties, that lady took no 

 notice whatsoever of the uproar below ; accustomed to the passage 

 of noisy boat-crews, and, like some other sovereigns who sit calmly 

 aloft, unable to realize that it is really against their sacred selves that 

 the mob beneath is howling, the Eagle never moved. Beaten at 

 our first move, we changed our plan. I crept down the talus, and 

 sent up a man to throw down dust and small pieces of earth (we 

 were afraid of breaking the eggs), in the hopes of driving her off 

 the nest. Luckily the very first piece of earth hit her, then came a 

 shower of sand, and concluding I suppose that the cliff was (as it 

 often does) about to fall, she flew off the nest with a rapid swoop. 

 Bang, bang, both barrels, 12-bore, No. 3 green cartridge, full in 

 the chest (as the body showed when we skinned it), and yet with a 

 half fall, like a tumbler pigeon, through some 15 or 20 feet, she 

 recovered herself and swooped away as if unhurt, close along the 

 face of the cliff ; 100 yards further I saw a tremor, then in a 

 moment it was clear that she was in the death struggle ; she began 

 to sink, and an instant after fell over and over on to a flat block 

 of clay with almost incredible violence. The dust flew up from 

 where she fell, as if a shell had dropt there, but as a specimen the 

 bird was scarcely injured. 



' ; We had hardly secured the female, after the manner of bird- 

 stuffers, plugging nostrils and shot-holes, stuffing throat and 

 smoothing feathers, when we heard a shrill creaking cry, and saw 

 the male coming straight for the nest with a bird (which turned 

 out to be a Turtur cctmbayensis) in his talons. Coming to the 

 nest, the bird seemed surprised to find it empty ; it took no notice 

 whatsoever of us, nor did it apparently catch sight of its mate, 

 stretched out with her white breast uppermost on the deck-like 

 platform of our barge, but it straightway settled itself down in 

 the centre of the nest and became entirely invisible. Again tiny 

 stones were thrown down, and after standing up, staring proudly 

 round and stalking to the edge of the platform, where he was 

 hailed with shouts, the male bird flew off slowly, swooping down to 

 within 20 yards of where I sat, and the next moment dropped stone 

 dead with only a loose charge of Xo. 6 through him. 



" He was a much smaller bird than the female. She measured 29 

 inches in length, nearly 70 in expanse, and weighed close on 6 Ibs. 

 He was only 26 in length, 62 in expanse, and about 4 Ibs. in weight. 



