HALIAETUS. 163 



At this particular place the old birds are very wild and wary, but 

 where, as frequently happens, they build in large trees in the 

 midst of houses and cocoanut-gardens, they become very familiar 

 and are not easily disturbed. Their loud, clanging note, when 

 close overhead, is almost deafening, and is audible a mile or more 

 distant. 



" In all the nests I have taken, containing single eggs, the eggs 

 have been fresh, and wherever the eggs were hard- set, or there 

 were young birds, the number was two. The eggs are greenish 

 white, unspotted, and rather smooth, but with no gloss, with a 

 pale green or eau de nil lining. The average of six eggs measured 

 gives a length of 2-81 and a breadth of 2*07, the largest egg 

 measuring 3 by 2-06, and the smallest 2-71 by 2-04." 



Captain E. E. Shopland, I.M., took an egg of this Eagle from a 

 nest built in a high tree in the compound of the Public Hospital, 

 Akyab, on the llth December ; it was of a chalky-white colour 

 and very rough in texture. 



Colonel Legge remarks that this species breeds in Ceylon during 

 the months of December, January, and February. 



The egg received from Nancowry was a very broad regular oval, 

 scarcely larger at one end than the other. The shell is rather 

 rough, entirely glossless, and densely pitted with large conspicuous 

 pores. The ground is dull white, but this is smudged and stained 

 with a dirty brown, probably from the droppings of the parent 

 bird. Held up against the light the shell was a very dark green. 

 The egg measured 2-5 by I'Ol. 



Another egg from Suvaindurg on the Malabar coast is rather 

 more elongated in shape, but otherwise very similar. In all the 

 eggs of this species which I have yet seen (and they are very 

 variable in size and shape) the shell, when held up against the 

 light, has been of the same intense blackish green as in H. leuco- 

 ryplius, but it is rather rougher than in that species. 



Haliaetus leucoryphus (Pall.). Pallas s Sea- Eagle. 



Halisetus fulvi venter (Vieill^)^ Jerd. B. 2nd. i ; p. 82. 

 Haliseetus macei (Cuv.), Hume, Rough Draft N. $ E. no. 42. 



Pallas's Sea-Eagle lays from the beginning of November to the 

 early part of February. The greater number of these birds, how- 

 ever, lay in December, and most of the nests that I have examined 

 later than the 15th of January have contained young ones. 



They build on large trees, on the peepul by preference, I think, 

 but also on many other kinds, sheeshum, banyan, &c. The trees 

 that they select are almost invariably solitary ones, situated either 

 on the banks of some river, or beside some considerable jheel. In 

 Upper India I do not know a single large jheel which retains 

 water in it as late as February, where a pair of this species does 

 not breed ; and all down the Jumna, Ganges, Chambul, Indus, 

 t'ht-nab, Jhelum, and Sutledge, wherever I have been, I have in- 



11* 



