spizaEttjs. 149 



Spizaetns limnaetus (Horsf.). The Changeable Hawk-Eagle. 



Limnaetus niveus ( Temm.), Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 70. 



Spizaetus caligatus {Raffi.), Hmne, Hough Draft N. ^ E. no. 34. 



I have never yet found a nest of the Changeable Hawk-Eagle. 



My friend, Mr. E. Thompson, furnishes me with the following 

 notes : — " The breeding-season commences in March, and lasts 

 until the end of June, but they mostly lay in April and May. The 

 nest is placed, at a height of from 40 to 50 feet from the ground, 

 on large trees in dense woods, usually in a good game locality. 

 The nest is a large round structure from 2-5 to 3 feet in diameter, 

 much resembling that of the common Aquila clanga, a thick clumsy 

 platform, composed of thick dry twigs and roots, with a central 

 depression from 4 to 5 inches deep, lined with fine roots and 

 stems. The eggs are usually two, but I have preserved no record 

 of their appearance, and I have no specimens by me to measure or 

 describe." 



Mr. J. 0. Parker writes :— " On the 16th February, 1874, 

 discovered a nest of this species on a mango-tree, one of a rather 

 scattered group growing in the old mud-forts at Samnuggar on the 

 E. B. Railway, about a mile from the station and close to a cart- 

 track through the forest. Both birds were on the nest, one in the 

 black and the other the spotted state of plumage ; the latter was 

 shot and proved to be a male ; one egg, quite fresh, was in the nest. 

 The nest itself was small and ragged, and might very well have 

 passed for an old last season's Kite's nest." 



Captain Feilden, writing from Thayetmyo, says : — " I have 

 taken a young bird from the nest in the middle of May, and seen 

 several young birds about the end of that month. These birds 

 build the usual Hawk-Eagle's nest in the fork of the largest and 

 most inaccessible tree that they can find, invariably, as far as I 

 know, overhanging the bed of a stream. Either numbers of these 

 birds build and do not lay, or else they desert their nests on the 

 slightest suspicion of their having been discovered. Of half a 

 dozen nests that I saw building in March, on one of which I saw 

 an old female engaged in arranging the sticks, not one ever 

 contained either egg or young bird ; though I found a large egg 

 dropped at a short distance from one of the nests, as if the bird 

 had deserted the nest and not built another. Se\eral pairs of 

 birds belonging to nests in more remote parts of the jungle seemed 

 all to have succeeded in rearing one young bird each. The 

 Burmese state that the birds only lay one egg, which is pure white. 

 Fragments of two eggs, one on the ground and another in the nest 

 from which I got the bird, were white." 



The egg sent by Mr. Parker, the only one I have seen, is an 

 elongated oval, a good deal compressed towards one end. The 

 shell, though firm and compact, is strongly pitted all over with very 

 conspicuous pores, and hence is rough and entirely glossless. The- 

 ground is white with a dull greyish tinge, very faint, and in some 



