434 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 



The finding of the Pygmy Eagle in extensive woods pre- 

 sents, as I have already said, certain difficulties. The dark 

 birds especially require a very practised eye to prevent their 

 being confounded with the Common Buzzard. In the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of Vienna it is not really so rare as one 

 imagines, for in some parts of the Wiener Wald it even 

 breeds every year, and during its migrations one sees it in 

 parks and quite unimportant patches of wood, while it has 

 been repeatedly killed in the pheasant preserves at Laxenburg 

 and in the vicinity of Hietzing. In spring I often saw from 

 one spot several of these eagles going through their aerial 

 evolutions above the quiet wooded valleys of the Wiener 

 Wald, the character of these woodlands appearing to possess 

 peculiarities specially attractive to the Pygmy Eagle, for they 

 always frequent them as a resting-place during the time of 

 migration, and in the breeding-season one or two pairs 

 habitually nest in the Imperial park at Hiitteldorf. 



The chain of the Fruska-Gora mountains, which has just 

 the same character as the Wiener Wald, is also a favourite 

 resort of the Pygmy Eagle, for there the beech and oak woods, 

 which are only interrupted by isolated little meadows, seem to 

 suit it quite as well as the large forests of the open country. 



In the Wiener Wald this bird can be most easily observed 

 during the early morning hours of fine June days, when it 

 comes flying out of the woods low over the ground, and 

 settles among the small glades in order to catch mice, and 

 more especially grasshoppers. There I have seen and ob- 

 served it for days together almost every year. I never saw 

 it in the auen of the Danube at Vienna, and I was also 

 told by the keepers that it rarely comes to those woods, and 

 only on migration. The character of the auen does not suit 

 it, for I saw it but twice in the great forests near Apatin 

 and the neighbourhood of the Draueck. On the first occasion 

 a single bird was flying about ; on the second I was patiently 



