TWELFTH DAY. 199 



to see whether its plumage would be light or dark; and indeed 

 the little eagle did not keep me waiting long, for I suddenly 

 heard its melodious notes on my right. The sound made by 

 the Pygmy Eagle is more than a call, for one might really 

 say that the consecutive and very different notes which it 

 utters amount to a short song; while the bird itself is, in my 

 opinion, undoubtedly the most interesting and least known of 

 all our raptorial species, and the one which offers to our ever- 

 combative ornithologists the greatest field for discussion. 



Cautiously looking in the direction whence the notes of 

 the eagle proceeded, I saw the splendid male, in its pale 

 glistening plumage, sitting bolt upright on a dead branch, 

 and unfortunately fired at it, although it was rather too far 

 off, for though it fell to the ground severely wounded, it 

 fluttered off among the thick undergrowth, where I soon lost 

 sight of it; and the most careful search proving fruitless, , my 

 hopes of adding to our collection a paired couple of Pygmy 

 Eagles in different plumages were quite frustrated. 



Frightened by the last shots, the inhabitants of this in- 

 teresting colony were flying about in the wildest disorder, 

 and among them I noticed a pair of Black Storks, which had 

 set up their abode in the midst of these birds of prey, but had 

 not yet finished building. 



As there seemed, for the present, to be no more chance of 

 doing any good in the outskirts of the wood, I pushed further 

 into it, and soon found a medium-sized nest on the upper 

 branches of a young oak, and from it there dashed out a dark- 

 coloured hawk while I was still some distance off. The bird 

 disappeared so rapidly that I did not recognize it, and I 

 therefore concealed myself behind a tree to await its return. 

 In a few minutes it came back, approaching through the trees 

 close to the ground, and the owner of the nest, falling to my 

 shot, lay in its death-struggle on the grass, and proved to be 

 an exceedingly handsome Goshawk. 



