NEOPTTS MALAYENSIS. 49 



The Black Eagle is found in most of the hilly wooded districts of India, but appears to visit certain 

 localities for a time and then depart again, reappearing the following year. In the south it is found in the 

 Travancore district and in the Malabar region generally, following the west coast' to the district of Surat. 



Mr. Fairbank says it is rare at Mahabaleshwar, and in the Deccan he has not observed it. In the Hima- 

 layas it ascends generally to an elevation of seven or eight thousand feet, and is more common there from 

 September till April than during the hot season. Col. Irby states that he has procured it as high as 10,000 feet. 

 Mr. Ball does not include it in his avifauna of Chota Nagpur, nor does it appear in the " First List of the 

 Birds of Upper Pegu " (' Stray Feathers,' 1875) . Mr. Brooks records it as rare above Mussoorie. 



To the south-east of the Himalayas its numbers commence to diminish ; it finds no place among the birds 

 collected in North-east Cachar by Mr. James Inglis (' Stray Feathers/ 1877) ; and though it is recorded by 

 Jerdon and other naturalists from Burmah proper, it does not appear to be common there. According to 

 Schlegel it is found in Malacca, and Wallace notes its occurrence in Java, Sumatra, and Celebes ; but in these 

 islands it appears to be far from numerous. 



Habits. — This fine, long-winged Eagle is, on account of the singular structure of its feet and its curious 

 habits, one of the most interesting, but at the same time perhaps the most destructive of Raptors to bird-life in 

 Ceylon. It subsists, as far as can be observed, entirely by bird-nesting, and is not content with the eggs and 

 young birds which its keen sight espies among the branches of the forest-trees, but seizes the nest in its talons, 

 decamps with it, and (as Mr. Bourdillon, in his article on the Travancore birds in ' Stray Feathers/ observes) 

 often examines the contents as it sails lazily along. Furthermore, Mr. S. Bligh informs me that he once 

 found the best part of a bird's nest in the stomach of one of these Eagles which he shot in the Central 

 Province ! Its flight is most easy and graceful. In the early morning it passes much of its time soaring 

 round the high peaks or cliffs on which it has passed the night, and about 9 or 10 o'clock starts off on its 

 daily foraging expedition ; it launches itself with motionless wings from some dizzy precipice, and proceeding 

 in a straight line till over some inviting-looking patna-woods, it quickly descends, with one or two rather 

 sharp gyrations, through perhaps a thousand feet, and is in another moment gliding stealthily along, just 

 above the tops of the trees : in and out among these, along the side of the wood, backwards and forwards over 

 the top of the narrow strip, it quarters, its long wings outstretched and the tips of its pinions wide apart, with 

 apparently no exertion ; and luckless indeed is the Bulbul, Oriole, or Mountain-Finch whose carefully-built 

 nest is discovered by the soaring robber. 



Mr. Frank Bourdillon, in his "Notes on the Birds of the Travancore Hills" (' Stray Feathers,' 1875, 

 p. 358), in which district this Eagle is not uncommon above 500 feet, remarks, " I have never seen it make any 

 attempt to seize a full-grown bird, but have once or twice seen one carry off a nest in its claws, and examine 

 the contents as it sailed lazily along. It is a very silent bird, and may be seen steadily quartering backwards 

 and forwards along the side of a hill and in and out among the tree-tops." 



It is, I think, worthy of remark that the long inner claws of this bird seem especially adapted for the work 

 of carrying off loose and fragile masses, such as the nests of small birds, as they would naturally form its chief 

 means of grasp when such an object was being held by both feet during the process of flight. 



Concerning its habits in India, Jerdon writes the following account, which is confirmatory of what I have 

 above stated : — " I never saw it perch, except for the purpose of feeding or on being wounded ; and the 

 Lepchas of Darjiling, when I saw this Eagle, said, ' This bird never sits down.' It lives almost exclusively, 

 I believe, by robbing birds' nests, devouring both the eggs and the young ones. I dare say if it saw a young 

 or sickly bird it might seize it ; but it has neither the ability nor dash to enable it to seize a strong Pheasant 

 on the wing, or even, I believe, a Partridge ; and Hodgson, I fancy, must have trusted to a native partially 

 ignorant of its habits, when he says ' that it preys on the Pheasants of the regions it frequents as well as 

 their eggs.' 



" I have examined several birds shot by myself, and invariably found that eggs and nestling birds had been 

 alone their food. In these cases I found the eggs of the Hill-Quail [Coturniw erythrorhyncha) , of Malaco- 

 circus malabaricus, and of some Doves (Turlur), with nestlings and the remains of some eggs that I did not 

 know. I have seen it also, after circling several times over a small tree, alight on it and carry off the contents 

 of a dove's nest. In India, doves, and perhaps some other birds, breed at all times in the year; and it may, 



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