When we had got halfway down the mountainside, a ‘Bubo’ [Eagle Owl] flew up. It was the size of a hen, woodcock-coloured and with black ears that met in a black line above the beak. I wished I had had my gun but it had been impossible to lug it along with me. Immediately after that we saw 3 chicks and an addled egg on a little flat grassy patch that faced due south and had walls of rock on its eastern and western sides so that the only wind that might cause any harm was one that came from the south. One of these chicks was twice the size of the others ie. the size of 2 fists and lively, covered all over in long, very soft, whitish down which looked like wool. We took it with us to the farm. The addled egg broke when I placed it between my hands to test it in the way country people test eggs. I found only a small amount of liquid in the bottom of it and it had such a vile stench that I dare not describe it for fear of inducing nausea both in myself and in others. I believe that the 2 eggs from which the smaller chicks had come had been hatched later. Alongside the nest there lay some small bones, of what I do not know. The chicks had eaten their fill. Beside them lay a large dead rat which was beginning to rot and fill up with maggots on the underside. I do not believe it to be at all possible for chicks so young to tear up food of such toughness, so they have to wait until the corpse rots enough for them to eat both maggots and foul flesh. Their beaks were black, as was the cere. The egg was almost spherical and as big as that of a turkey.