NINTH DAY. 149 
riverside, and then to a chain of hills running in a westerly 
direction, and which were really the spurs and outlying 
heights of the Fruska-Gora. We had put Homeyer ashore, 
for he had planned a ramble through the “auen” opposite 
Cerevié in order to study the smaller birds. 
After an hour’s run we stopped, the steamer anchored, and 
my jager and I got out and went ashore in the ‘ Vienna.’ 
A little marshy meadow and the main road here separated the 
Danube from a high steep wall of earth, bordered at some 
places by dense thorny thickets; and at one spot this cliff 
formed a caldron-shaped ravine, where there was an Eagle- 
Owl’s nest well known to the keepers. It was situated in a 
cleft of the earthy wall, so I walked up close under the almost 
perpendicular cliff, and there stationed myself behind a 
bush, while some peasants who had come up threw stones at 
the owl’s nest. A very large female Eagle-Owl flew slowly 
out, and sweeping round above my head with its widely 
extended wings, was just going to return to the nest from 
the other side, when a successful shot brought it to the 
ground. Frightened by the noise, the male, which had been 
sitting in a thicket, also came past; but being too far off, I 
unfortunately failed to kill it, and after the shots it flew 
away along the earthy wall and disappeared in the far 
distance. 
We now told a peasant who was standing on the top of the 
cliff to take the nest, and with great cleverness, evidently 
the result of much practice, this Slavonian climbed along 
the cliff with his sandalled feet, getting a foothold in the 
bushes and little cracks, and so managed to get to the nest 
and bring us out a little owl, quite young, perhaps not more 
than a few days old; but we made him put it back into the 
nest, as it would probably have died in a few hours. 
The Eagle-Owl I had shot was a singularly large female 
and a splendid specimen. This was the first time that I 
