434 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 
The finding of the Pygmy Eagle in extensive woods pre- 
sents, as I have already said, certain difficulties. The dark 
birds especially require a very practised eye to prevent their 
being confounded with the Common Buzzard. In the imme- 
diate neighbourhood of Vienna it is not really so rare as one 
imagines, for in some parts of the Wiener Wald it even 
breeds every year, and during its migrations one sees it in 
parks and quite unimportant patches of wood, while it has 
been repeatedly killed in the pheasant preserves at Laxenburg 
and in the vicinity of Hietzing. In spring I often saw from 
one spot several of these eagles going through their aerial 
evolutions above the quiet wooded valleys of the Wiener 
Wald, the character of these woodlands appearing to possess 
peculiarities specially attractive to the Pygmy Eagle, for they 
always frequent them as a resting-place during the time of 
migration, and in the breeding-season one or two pairs 
habitually nest in the Imperial park at Hiitteldorf. 
The chain of the Fruska-Gora mountains, which has just 
the same character as the Wiener Wald, is also a favourite 
resort of the Pygmy Eagle, for there the beech and oak woods, 
which are only interrupted by isolated little meadows, seem to 
suit it quite as well as the large forests of the open country. 
In the Wiener Wald this bird can be most easily observed 
during the early morning hours of fine June days, when it 
comes flying out of the woods low over the ground, and 
settles among the small glades in order to catch mice, and 
more especially grasshoppers. There I have seen and ob- 
served it for days together almost every year. I never saw 
it in the auen of the Danube at Vienna, and I was also 
told by the keepers that it rarely comes to those woods, and 
only on migration. The character of the auen does not suit 
it, for I saw it but twice in the great forests near Apatin 
and the neighbourhood of the Draueck. On the first occasion 
a single bird was flying about ; on the second I was patiently 
