386 
Lord Lilford on the Ornithology of Spain. 
and I at once sent off the chicos of the family to seek and bring 
in all the eggs that they could find, as our hostess informed me 
that one of her sons was a demonio for bird's-nesting and would 
soon enlist the flower of the youth of San Ildefonso in my 
behalf. The result this evening was a nest with five eggs of the 
Blue Magpie, and an egg of the Cinereous Vulture, which last 
the boys assured me they had found on the ground at a spot 
much frequented by this species, which breeds in the pine-forest 
close at hand, and is by far the most common Vulture in the 
Castiles. This egg is slightly smaller than those of Gyps fulvus 
in my collection, and is of a uniform clouded reddish-pink 
colour, very much resembling some varieties of the egg of Aquila 
chrysaetus. I have no hesitation in ascribing this egg to Vultur 
monachus , as, although I was unfortunately too late to find the 
eggs in situ myself, the fragments of egg-shells found in and 
below several nests of this Vulture exactly corresponded with 
this specimen, and I found that Gyps fulvus, of which species a 
few pairs used in former years to nest in a range of cliffs near 
the village, is now comparatively scarce in the district, only one 
individual coming under our notice during our stay at San 
Ildefonso, which fell to Manuel's gun, and is now in my collec¬ 
tion. 1 received a letter from Manuel from Aranjuez informing 
me that he had been too late at Viliamejor for the nests of 
Aquila lieliaca , but had obtained there several eggs of the Booted 
Eagle with the parent birds, besides many other species. M. 
Michel and he arrived at San Ildefonso on June 5th. In the 
meantime the boys had brought me many eggs of different 
species, amongst them those of the Common Sparrow-Hawk 
(Accipiter nisus), which is abundant here, though I never met 
with it at Aranjuez, Bed-necked Nightjar, Blue Magpie, Spec¬ 
tacled Warbler, Missel Thrush, Blackbird, Common Swift, and 
Grey and Yellow Wagtails ( Motacilla sulphurea and Budytes 
flava). We drove to Segovia, six miles off, seeing on our way a 
good number of White Storks ( Ciconia alba), Common and 
Black Kites, Woodchats, and Russet Wheatears ( Saocicola stapa- 
zina), but not a single Bee-eater, Spotted Cuckoo, or Common 
Magpie, which birds, so abundant about Madrid and Aran¬ 
juez, appear to be very scarce on this northern side of the Gua- 
