166 FIFTEEN DAYS ON THE DANUBE. 
hear the bustle it made as it settled on the edge of the 
nest, without seeing the arrival of the bird itself. On hearing 
the noise I remained perfectly quiet, as I wanted to let the 
eagle get quite confident before I frightened it out of its 
dwelling ; but, as I afterwards learnt from the jigers, it 
stayed a long time on the edge of its nest, and if I had bent 
forward a little I could easily have shot it down at a short 
range. When, after a few minutes, I did look out, the bird 
was again on the alert, having perhaps noticed the forester, 
who was concealed afew hundred yards away ; and hardly had 
I stepped out of my ambush, when it dashed off, and the two 
shots which I fired at it were ineffective, for, though a few 
feathers fell, the eagle seemed to be quite sound. 
There was therefore no further chance of a shot at the pair 
belonging to this nest, and they were quite lost to me; so I 
walked slowly up the hillside to the trap, much annoyed and 
blaming myself for my clumsiness. 
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun 
was burning fiercely, while far away in the south astorm was 
passing over the Bosnian mountains. We had now come 
to the end of the nests that we already knew of; but these 
excellent keepers declared that afew days ago they had found 
another nest, where, according to their account, a smaller 
hawk was breeding, but such was their entire lack of sporting 
and ornithological knowledge, that they could not describe 
what it looked like. I therefore resolved to hurry to it as 
quickly as I could, and try to retrieve by a fresh success my 
mishaps at the two nests of the Imperial Eagles. 
Our road now took us back along the mountain-ridge in an 
easterly direction ; and this part of the drive I employed in 
devouring a bit of bread which was all that had been put in 
the game-bag, for I was terribly hungry, and there was no 
other food obtainable for far and wide. 
For about half an hour we drove obliquely down the 
