EIGHTH DAY. 135 



second time in an inhabited nest of the Common Kite. On 

 the first occasion of my doing so the nest was in a beech tree 

 in the Wiener Wald, near Weidlingen, and here was the bird 

 again in a perfectly similar nest on the same sort of tree in 

 the Fruska-Gora mountains. I already counted on the pleasure 

 of detailing my observations and presenting the specimen to 

 Homeyer, who was particularly anxious to take home this 

 species of eagle, which he had never observed at its nest or 

 even seen in the flesh. 



I now hurried back to the carts, and we continued our 

 wanderings, driving up and down steep slopes and over shady 

 wooded summits until we got to the conical top of a hill 

 thinly covered with oaks. Here we halted, and, accompanied 

 only by the forester, I walked along the west side of the hill 

 and then climbed slowly up a slope covered with sun-scorched 

 grass. Some hundreds of feet below us lay a small damp 

 glade, through which wound a noisy little brook, and on the 

 opposite side of this open rose a high and very abrupt hill- 

 side wooded with beeches and young oaks. Halfway up it 

 a tall enormous pear-tree stood out prominently, and this 

 tree, which must have been hundreds of years old, bore on its 

 dead upper branches the great nest of a Cinereous Vulture* 

 From our position on the opposite slope we could, with the 

 glass, see the huge bird perfectly and follow all its movements 

 as it lay flat in the nest, drooping its head as if tired by the 

 heat. We now sat down for a moment's rest ; for the midday 

 hours were so insupportably hot that we already felt somewhat 

 fatigued. 



In a little while the vulture raised its head, looked back 

 attentively, left its nest, and passed quickly out of the valley 

 low over the brook. We had hardly lost sight of it when a 

 second and much larger bird, evidently the female, flew from 

 the opposite direction straight to the nest, settled on its edge 

 and hopped clumsily in to sit on the eggs. 



