426 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 



Eagle (Aquila imperial! s), the lesser relative of the " Stein" 

 Eagle. In vain I searched for it in the great virgin forests 

 of Southern Hungary north of the Draueck, as well as in the 

 woods to the west of the Danube below Mohacs. Not once 

 did I even see it circling aloft ; I was, however, told by the 

 keepers that isolated couples often built their nests in the 

 great oak woods to the south-west of Mohacs, but, as I have 

 already said, I could not personally verify the statement. 



It was some distance above Futak that I first saw the 

 Imperial Eagle. The bird was cruising over the Danube, 

 and from the steamer I observed several others of the same 

 species as they were setting out in the morning from the 

 wooded mountains of Slavonia towards the plains of the 

 Hungarian side of the river, in search of plunder. In the 

 true Syrmian mountains of the Yrdnik or Fruska-Grora there 

 are many nests of the Imperial Eagle ; but there it selects 

 the low outlying hills and the woods bordering the plains in 

 preference to the beech-forests which cover the higher moun- 

 tains, and though I certainly found a few nests among the 

 mountains, I met with it more frequently at lower elevations. 



The reason of this is pretty clear : the ziesel forms its 

 chief food, an observation that was also made by Brehm on 

 the steppes of Siberia. One can easily see what a vital 

 necessity this little rodent is to the Imperial Eagle, and as it 

 is, of course, only found among fields, meadows, and heaths, 

 the eagles prefer to settle in the woods of the cultivated 

 country and the outlying hills. 



The seven nests of this eagle which I saw were all placed 

 on oaks, some of them on thin saplings, for while the other 

 eagles, even the small ones such as the Osprey, the Pygmy, 

 and the Spotted, all show fastidious caution in picking out old 

 and lofty trees on which to construct their dwellings, the 

 Imperial appears to content itself with any tree that it hap- 

 pens to find. The nest itself, compared with those of other 



