436 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 
The Pygmy Eagle has a fine melodious voice: I might 
really speak of it as the singing eagle ; for the varied notes 
which it utters constitute a song, short indeed, but still not a 
call, and more like the utterances of many of the song-birds 
than the shrill. whistle of the other raptorial birds. 
I had often heard this song of the Pygmy Eagle, but at 
first never imagined that the pretty notes proceeded from a 
bird of prey until I chanced to see the beautiful creature 
perched on a dead branch with open beak and inflated throat, 
warbling its ecstatic love-song to its sitting mate. 
I believe that I am right in thinking that, like its larger 
relatives, it only pairs after several years, for during each 
breeding-season I saw solitary individuals ranging carelessly 
through the woods in pursuit of sport and plunder. 
Its nest much reminds one of that of the Spotted Eagle 
or of the Common Buzzard, and, as with them, the structure 
is distinctly large compared with the size of the bird. I 
believe that only in the rarest instances does the Pygmy 
Eagle have recourse to nest-building; and that, wherever 
it can do so, it turns the Spotted Eagles and Buzzards 
out of their dwellings, as it naturally prefers their nests, 
and that where it can find nothing better it appropriates 
the slovenly constructed abodes of the Kites instead of 
making a nest of its own. I have twice found and killed 
Pygmy Eagles at nests which on both occasions were proved 
to belong to the Common Kite. It was in the Wiener Wald 
that this first happened. I had found a Kite’s nest, had ob- 
served the splendid pair of birds for some days, and had even 
fired an ineffectual shot at them, when one afternoon, as I was 
again sitting under the nest, there appeared, instead of the 
Kite, a beautiful light-coloured Pygmy Eagle. It flew noise- 
lessly to the tree where the nest was placed, settled on the 
edge of the Kite’s dwelling, towards the interior of which it 
was stretching out its head, when a shot brought it down. 
