582 



8 



ton in weight ; and on this platform (with only her head visible from where we stood at the 

 water's edge) an old female Eagle sat in state. This was on Christmas day ! It is not many 

 holidays a really working official gets in India, or at least can afford to give himself; and part of 

 mine are generally spent in the open air, gun in hand. 



" At the foot of the cliffs is a talus of rough blocks of clay, that it will take many a flood 

 yet to amalgamate ; and up to this I crept until I was only sixty feet below the nest. Here, 

 however, I could see nothing of the bird ; I shouted and kicked the cliff; the men below screamed, 

 threw fragments of kunker (one of which very nearly blinded me), and by various signs attempted 

 to indicate to Mrs. Bonelli that a change of locality was desirable. Serenely sublime in the 

 discharge of her maternal duties, that lady took no notice whatsoever of the uproar, below; 

 accustomed to the passage of noisy boat-crews, and like some other sovereigns, who sit calmly 

 aloft unable to realize that it is really against their sacred selves that the mob beneath is 

 howling, the Eagle never moved. Beaten at our first move, we changed our plan. I crept 

 down the talus, and sent up a man to throw down dust and small pieces of earth (we were afraid 

 of breaking the eggs), in the hopes of driving her off the nest. Luckily the very first piece of 

 earth hit her ; then came a shower of sand ; and concluding, I suppose, that the cliff was about 

 to fall (as it often does), she flew off the nest with a rapid swoop. Bang, bang, both barrels, 

 12 bore, No. 3 green cartridge, full in the chest (as the body showed when we skinned it) ; and 

 yet, with a half fall, like a tumbler Pigeon, through some fifteen or twenty feet, she recovered 

 herself and swooped away as if unhurt, close along the face of the cliff. A hundred yards further 

 I saw a tremor ; then in a moment it was clear that she was in the death-struggle ; she began to 

 sink, and an instant after fell over and over on to a flat block of clay with almost incredible 

 violence. The dust flew up from where she fell, as if a shell had dropt there ; but as a specimen 

 the bird was scarcely injured. 



" We had hardly secured the female, after the manner of bird-stuffers, plugging nostrils and 

 shot-holes, stuffing throat and smoothing feathers, when we heard a shrill creaking cry and saw 

 the male coming straight for the nest with a bird (which turned out to be a Turtur cambayensis) 

 in his talons. Coming to the nest, the bird seemed surprised to find it empty ; it took no notice 

 whatsoever of us ; nor did it apparently catch sight of its mate, stretched out with her breast 

 uppermost on the deck-like platform of our barge ; but it straightway settled itself down in the 

 centre of the nest and became entirely invisible. Again tiny stones were thrown down ; and after 

 standing up, staring proudly round, and stalking to the edge of the platform, where he was hailed 

 with shouts, the male bird flew off slowly, swooping down to within twenty yards of where I sat 5 

 and the next moment dropped stone dead with only a loose charge of No. 6 through him. He 

 was a much less bird than the female. She measured 29 inches in length, nearly 70 in expanse, 

 and weighed close on 6 lbs. He was only 26 in length, 62 in expanse, and about 4 lbs. in 

 weight. 



" We had now to get the eggs, if eggs there were, because as yet we could only guess and 

 surmise in regard to these. Just above the recess, the cliff bosomed out with a full swell for 

 some two or three feet, effectually preventing any one's looking down into the nest from above, 

 or, except by an accidental cannon in the broad groove, such as my boatman had made by a 

 fluke at the very first shot, from even throwing any thing down into it. Above the swell, the 



