BONELM'S EAGLE. 87 
The other Eagle having risen again also makes another stoop, which 
is generally fatal. I have not yet been fortunate enough to meet 
with the nest of this Hawk Eagle, but it is said by native Shikarees 
to build on steep and inaccessible cliffs, and to breed in January and 
February." 
Mr. Hume, in his " Scrap Book," No. 1, gives an interesting account 
of this bird. I have only room for a short extract or two. — 
" This Eagle in the plains of India lays in the latter half of December 
and January; but in the Himalayas it lays, I believe, in April and 
May. The nest is usually placed on ledges of precipitous earthen or 
rocky cliffs, and in the plains I think preferentially in the immediate 
neighbourhood of some large river or gheel. I have repeatedly seen 
their nests in the high clay cliffs of the Jumna and Chumbal, in the 
Etawah districts, and I found a pair breeding in the ruined and 
cyclopean walls of the ancient Togluckabad, south of Delhi. Occa- 
sionally, however, they build on trees, and I found a nest containing a 
single egg in a large Peepul tree near Bhurtpore. The nest is very 
large, from four to six feet in diameter, and is composed of thickish 
and moderate-sized sticks, varying from 1.5 to 0.5 in diameter. There 
is no depression in the interior of the nest. In the centre of the 
platform a circular space of some eighteen inches in diameter is com- 
monly smoothed over with a thin layer of green twigs; and in the 
centre of this again a smaller space of perhaps one foot in diameter 
is carefully carpeted with green leaves, those of the Neem, Peepul, 
Peeloo, and other trees being apparently indifferently made use of." 
Usually they lay two eggs, but Mr. Hume once found three. 
"All I have seen were oval, varying slightly in size and in the 
comparative length of the minor axis. Many are unspotted, the rest 
more or less faintly blotched, streaked, or spotted with pale yellowish 
or reddish brown. I have never seen a richly-coloured egg of this 
species. The ground colour is that of all Eagles of this type — a pale 
greyish or bluish white, often becoming during incubation much soiled 
and discoloured. They vary in size from 2.56 to 3 inches in length, 
and from 1.95 to 2.22 inches in breadth, but the average of nine eggs 
was 2.83 by 2.1." 
Mr. Brooks, of Etawah, says, "The eggs were usually two, but in 
two instances only one. Two were white unmarked, but all the others 
sparingly blotched and spotted with bright reddish brown, and some- 
times intermixed with blotches of light reddish grey; the largest measures 
2.96 inches by 2.16, the smallest 2.79 by 2.04 inches. I have a pair 
of eggs out of one nest, one plain white, the other well marked." 
There is a long series of this bird in the Norwich Museum, shewing 
