114 FIFTEEN DAYS ON THE DANUBE. 



enough, and it there breeds almost exclusively in the cliffs near 

 villages, and usually avoids lonely wooded mountains. Brehm 

 confirmed this statement of the Count's, and was much sur- 

 prised at seeing the bird and at hearing that it had been 

 killed in these woods ; he also gave it as his opinion that the 

 Griffon Vulture never builds its nest on trees, but some hours 

 later we were to have ample proof that Brehm was for once 

 wrong. We left the house in a few minutes and were all 

 despatched in totally different directions. My brother-in-law 

 drove off into the woods to the left in a little country cart; 

 Bombelles and the two Savants also vanished among the thick 

 cover by various routes; while Count Chotek and I continued 

 our drive along the stream up the valley already described, 

 the road often crossing the little brook, and leading us through 

 the woods and small marshy glades of this mountain glen, 

 which kept getting narrower and narrower. 



The deeper we penetrated into it the higher grew the sur- 

 rounding summits and the steeper the slopes, and as we were 

 passing along a hillside where there was a long and very 

 broad clearing covered with thick bushes, I suddenly caught 

 sight of a huge black bird of prey flying majestically over one 

 of the heights. I was just thinking that it was too large for 

 an eagle, and its flight was also strange to me, when Count 

 Chotek called out that it was a Cinereous Vulture. It was 

 the first that I had ever seen in a wild state, and its gigantic 

 pinions, with their primaries standing apart like the fingers 

 of an outstretched hand, its cuneate tail, its long neck doubled 

 back among the feathers of its neck-ruffle, and the way in 

 which it sailed through the blue ether, without the slightest 

 visible movement of its wings, made this heavy bird, which 

 seems so disgusting near at hand, look splendid in the distance. 

 A few moments afterwards I saw another, and again another, 

 while wherever one looked one noticed either a young Sea- 

 Eagle flying heavily over the tree-tops, a " Stein " Eagle 



