EIGHTH DAY. , 135 
second time in an inhabited nest of the Common Kite. On 
the first occasion of my doing so the nest was in a beech tree 
in the Wiener Wald, near Weidlingen, and here was the bird 
again in a perfectly similar nest on the same sort of tree in 
the Fruska-Gora mountains. I already counted on the pleasure 
of detailing my observations and presenting the specimen to 
Homeyer, who was particularly anxious to take home this 
species of eagle, which he had never observed at its nest or 
even seen in the flesh. 
I now hurried back to the carts, and we continued our 
wanderings, driving up and down steep slopes and over shady 
wooded summits until we got to the conical top of a hill 
thinly covered with oaks. Here we halted, and, accompanied 
only by the forester, I walked along the west side of the hill 
and then climbed slowly up a slope covered with sun-scorched 
grass. Some hundreds of feet below’ us lay a small damp 
glade, through which wound a noisy little brook, and on the: 
opposite side of this open rose a high and very abrupt hill- 
side wooded with beeches and young oaks. Halfway up it 
a tall enormous pear-tree stood out prominently, and this 
tree, which must have been hundreds of years old, bore on its 
dead upper branches the great nest of a Cinereous Vulture. 
From our position on the opposite slope we could, with the 
glass, see the huge bird perfectly and follow all its movements 
as it lay flat in the nest, drooping its head as if tired by the 
heat, We now sat down for a moment’s rest; for the midday 
hours were so insupportably hot that we already felt somewhat 
fatigued. - 
In a little while the vulture raised its head, looked back 
attentively, left its nest, and passed quickly out of the valley 
low over the brook. We had hardly lost sight of it when a 
second and much larger bird, evidently the female, flew from 
the opposite direction straight to the nest, settled on its edge 
and hopped clumsily in to sit on the eggs, 
