FROM SPAIN. 489 
more inhabited districts this shy bird naturally chooses inac- 
cessible precipices in preference to trees as being safer. 
In the forests of the Sierra Guadarrama it is by no means 
obliged to build on trees, for it is only a short flight to the 
rocks of that high snowy range, while the high projections of 
the Pefia Blanca in the midst of the woods would also afford 
it excellent nesting-places. Nevertheless, my attendant found 
a nest on an old fir-tree, not far from the above rock, killed 
the female, and unfortunately missed the male. This was the 
last “Stein” Hagle that we met with in Spain, for on the 
heights near the Escorial no eagles came to the lure. 
I think I am right in asserting that there are more birds 
of this species in the eastern parts of our native land than 
in the whole Spanish peninsula. Their shyness, however, 
increases the difficulty of finding them out and of studying 
them in a strange country, for their habits being so erratic, 
one only meets with them accidentally; their eyries, too, when 
not on trees, are, as a rule, situated in such inaccessible preci- 
pices, that the taking of them is the most difficult and 
dangerous of tasks for the collector of eggs or young birds ; 
even the nests of vultures are easier to get at. It is also 
hard to acquire any definite information about this eagle 
from the natives, as it goes by a different name in most parts 
of Spain ; in the north the herdsmen call it “ Aquila pinta.” 
In whatever part of the country it occurs, it is always the 
most dreaded of the raptorial birds, and the peasants have far 
more tales to tell of its depredations than of the Bearded 
Vulture’s. 
The Spanish “Stein” Eagle has the plumage of the true 
Aquila fulva form, being very dark, with a white tail tipped 
with black, precisely the reverse of the northern “Stein” 
Eagle, the so-called chrysaétos, and I always found that the 
Spanish eagles of this species which I saw in museums were 
very uniform in colour. 
