some Notes on Tame Serpent Eagles.



157



cut short in the middle. Later on when I had made an opening for

them just under the roof, they got out of the fowl-house through

this and I never again heard them call inside the house. They were

very early retiring birds and were generally on their perch in the

fowl-house before the fowls themselves went in to roost and after

the window had been made for them they were always out first

also and would soar up to great heights to greet the morning sun,


. welcoming the first rays with their shrill notes. This call can

be heard from an immense distance and I nearly always knew of the

advent of my eagles, first by ear and afterwards by eye. When I

had been away from home out in camp and was returning, the two

birds would often spot me as they soared overhead, although they

were quite invisible to me, and would come to meet me when I was

within some three or four miles of the house. They would occa¬

sionally come right down, and more than once actually settled on

my shoulder, but as a rule they came to the roadside and perched on

some tree, from which they would take short flights from one tree

to another as they followed me on my route home.


I was often away from home for weeks at a time, but it

seemed to make no difference to the eagles, and they always re¬

sumed relations exactly where we had left off. Curiously enough,

when I went away from home they never accompanied me, though

they so often met me on my return, and probably they ranged over

a very restricted area for such powerful winged birds. I do not

think I ever met them five miles from the house, so that a diameter

of ten miles would have probably covered their special extent of

country.


About the same area would also seem to form the hunting

ground of wild pairs, and in many instances it is possibly much

smaller even than this. In North Cachar, and indeed all over

Assam, these eagles are extraordinarily numerous, and it would be

impossible to take a walk of 20 miles in any direction in well-wooded

country without seeing one or more pairs. In spite of this, however,

its nest is one of the hardest eagle’s nests to find that I know of,

and even when found it seems to he nearly always empty. The

reason for this is probably that the birds do not lay season after



