GYPAETUS BARBATUS. 161 



"The next morning, January 18th, as we were passing along a 

 mule-track over a pass, we noticed first one and then a second 

 Bearded Vulture fly into a small cave only thirty feet up a cliff 

 facing the road, which is much frequented by muleteers and 

 labourers going to the olive-plantations. From the path below I 

 could distinctly see both birds one sitting on the nest arranging 

 the lining, the other (the male) standing on the floor of the cave. 

 Later on I saw one of the birds carry a large piece of wool into 

 the nest, holding it, not as an Eagle would do, in its claws, but 

 in its bill. For some time I watched both Vultures beating to 

 and fro over the mountain-slopes. They fly with their beaks and 

 eyes turned towards the ground, after the manner of Terns. The 

 male, when on the wing, is conspicuously smaller than his mate. 



" On the 1 9th I sent Francisco, a professional hunter of wild 

 bees' nests and a splendid rock-climber, into the nest ; he reported 

 that it was lined with clean sheep's-wool, but had as yet no eggs. 

 While Francisco was in the nest, the female bird watched him 

 from an adjacent crag, but no sooner had he reached the valley 

 below than she returned and stayed in the nest for a few minutest 

 On the 20th we went to look at some Bearded Vultures' nests of 

 last year : one was only six feet below the brow of a cliff, and 

 was, as usual, built in a small cave, being a small flattened mass 

 of dead sticks lined with pieces of esparto-rope, and contained, 

 as in the nest of 1876, an alpargata in the lining. Not far off 

 was a nest of the Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetus), a vast pile of 

 sticks on an open ledge of the cliff. 



"On the 21st we went to look at a nest about a league off, 

 which turned out to be occupied by Golden Eagles ; but Juan 

 assured me that, although a pair of Eagles had nested in it in 

 1880, the year of the Prince's visit, Quebrantahuesos had bred in 

 it the year before. Francisco went into the nest and found it 

 empty ; he had just come up, and we were talking to a goatherd, 

 whose flock of goats, sheep, kids, and lambs were feeding about 

 the rocks below, when suddenly a large bird appeared round a 



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