32 FALCONID^E. 



and is very daring during the breeding season. The male, he says, is always on the 

 watch circling gracefully in the air above the nest or seated on some neighbour- 

 ing tree, whence on the slightest approach of danger he comes swooping 

 down towards his eyrie, uttering a hoarse, croaking noise as a warning to the 

 female who instantly leaves the nest and joins her partner. 



This is not however Mr. Hume's experience, he looks upon the " Konigs- 

 adler " as no better than a great hulking kite. He has taken their eggs before 

 their eyes without the parents flapping a pinion to defend what a Shrike would 

 swoop to save. The Imperial Eagle, though preying on quails, rats, and some- 

 times hares, does not disdain carrion. 



28. Aquila mogilnik, Gm. N. Comm. Petrop, xv. p. 445, pi. xi. b. 

 (1770). Aquila bifasciata, J . E. Gray in Gray & Hardw. 111. Ind. Zool. i. 

 pi. 17; Anderson, P. Z. S. 1871, p. 621. Aquila nipalensis, Hodgs. Asiatic 

 Researches, xviii. pt. 2, p. 13, pi. I. The RUSSIAN EAGLE. 



Adult Male. Head darker brown than the back, which is a pale brown, as also 

 the lesser and median wing coverts ; lower back, and rump, the under surface 

 of the body and some of the median wing coverts tipped with fulvous ; the 

 greater wing coverts dark brown, also tipped with fulvous. Lores whitish. Primaries 

 and their coverts deep brown, tipped broadly in some with buffy or ashy grey 

 with buffish tips. Under surface of the wing blackish brown, mottled with 

 greyish at the base of the inner web ; under wing coverts brown, the lesser 

 series pure white. Upper tail coverts white, tail brown with indistinct ashy 

 bars and fulvous tips. Cere, gape, base of lower mandible, and feet deep 

 yellow ; bill blackish ; irides dark brown. 



Length. 30 inches ; wing 22 ; tail 117 ; tarsus 4. (Sharpe.) 



The adult female is not very much larger. The length as given by Sharpe 

 in his Catalogue of the Accipitres in the British Museum is 30 inches ; wing 

 23'2 ; tail 11*5 ; tarsus 4. The young male is described as ashy brown on the 

 upper surface, shaded with glossy purplish black on the back, scapulars, and 

 wing coverts. Median and greater coverts blackish, shaded with ashy grey and 

 broadly tipped with bright ochraceous fawn colour, paling into fulvous on the 

 extreme tip and forming a triple band across the wing. Primaries and their 

 coverts blackish, broadly tipped with fawn colour ; both webs, like the wing 

 coverts, distinctly but irregularly barred with silvery grey, distinctly so on the 

 under surface of the secondaries. Primaries black below, greyish on the inner 

 web, and thickly mottled with brownish ; lower back and rump ashy brown 

 like the head, the lower feathers of the latter part more or less marked with 

 fawn colour ; the upper tail coverts entirely fawn colour, paling into fulvous on 

 their tips ; tail dark brown with a broad terminal band of fawn colour mottled 

 conspicuously with ashy grey on the outer feathers and taking the form of 

 imperfect bars on the middle ones, sometimes 8 or 9 being distinguishable. 

 Sides of face and neck as well as entire under surface of the body ashy brown, 



