NISAETUS EASCIATUS. 
39 
Nilghiris it breeds as early as December. The nest is usually placed in the ledge of a cliff, but it has been 
found fixed in the branches of large trees. It is a huge platform of sticks, containing in the centre a circle or 
layer of fresh green leaves, on which the eggs are laid, and which the bird covers them with on leaving the 
nest, in the same manner that I have myself seen the Grey-backed Sea-Eagle do. 
Mr. Hume, in his interesting account of the taking of this Eagle’s nest, given in ‘The Ibis’ for 1869 
(p. 143), speaks of one nest visited as being five feet in diameter. The situation of this nest is thus de- 
scribed : “ About a mile above the confluence of the clear blue waters of the Chambal and the muddy stream 
of the Jumna, in a range of bold perpendicular clay cliffs that rise more than 100 feet above the cold-weather 
level of the former, I took my first nest of Bonelli’s Eagle. In the rainy season, water trickling from above 
had (in a way trickling water often does) worn a deep recess into the face of the cliff, about a third of the 
way down. Above and below it had merely grooved the surface broadly, but here (finding a softer bed, I 
suppose) it had worn in a recess some 5 feet high and 3 feet deep and broad. The bottom of this recess sloped 
downwards ; but the birds, by using branches with large twiggy extremities, had built up a level platform that 
projected some 2 feet beyond the face of the cliff. It was a great mass of sticks fully half a ton in weight, 
and on this platform (with only her head visible from where we stood at the water’s edge) an old female Eagle 
sat in state.” 
The eggs are usually two in number ; but some nests have been found with only one. They are described 
by Mr. Hume as “ moderately broad ovals, varying slightly in size.” They are whitish in colour, sometimes 
quite unmarked, but usually are faintly blotched with pale yellowish or reddish brown. The markings in others, 
as gh en by Mr. Brooks, are darker, or “ bright reddish brown, sparingly intermixed with light reddish grey.” 
They average in size 2 - 78 by 21 inches. 
In the Holy Land, Canon Tristram found it nesting on the cliffs of the deep gorges characteristic of that 
country. He writes, in ' The Ibis,’ 1865, p. 253 It does not appear to lay till the end of March, and then 
generally a single egg. These are either white or with the faintest russet spots. One nest, which contained 
two eggs both fairly coloured, baffled all our attempts at its capture. It was comfortably placed under an 
overhanging piece of rock near the top of the cliffs of Wady Hamam, in such a position that no rope could be 
thrown over to let down an adventurous climber ; and yet from another point, which projected nearly parallel 
to it, we could look into the nest with longing eyes. The old birds seemed perfectly aware of the impregna- 
bility of their fortress.” 
