Birds -- United States; Natural history -- Outdoor books
I recently discovered one of these nests in a most interesting
situation. The tree containing it, a variety of wild cherry, stood
upon the brink of the bald summit of a high mountain. Gray, timeworn
rocks lay piled loosely about, or overtoppled the just visible byways
of the red fox. The trees had a half-scared look, and that
indescribable wildness which lurks about the tops of all remote
mountains possessed the place. Standing there, I looked down upon the
back of the red-tailed hawk as he flew out over the earth beneath me.
Following him, my eye also took in farms and settlements and villages
and other mountain ranges that grew blue in the distance.
The parent birds attracted my attention by appearing with food in
their beaks, and by seeming much put out. Yet so wary were they of
revealing the locality of their brood, or even of the precise tree
that held them, that I lurked around over an hour without gaining a
point on them. Finally a bright and curious boy who accompanied me
secreted himself under a low, projected rock close to the tree in
which we supposed the nest to be, while I moved off around the
mountain-side. It was not long before the youth had their secret. The
tree which was low and wide-branching, and overrun with lichens,
appeared at a cursory glance to contain not one dry or decayed limb.
Yet there was one a few feet long, in which, when my eyes were piloted
thither, I detected a small round orifice.
As my weight began to shake the branches, the consternation of both
old and young was great. The stump of a limb that held the nest was
about three inches thick, and at the bottom of the tunnel was
excavated quite to the bark. With my thumb I broke the thin wall, and
the young, which were full-fledged, looked out upon the world for the
first time. Presently one of them, with a significant chirp, as much
to say, "It is time we were out of this," began to climb up toward the
proper entrance. Placing himself in the hole, he looked around without
manifesting any surprise at the grand scene that lay spread out before
him. He was taking his bearings, and determining how far he could
trust the power of his untried wings to take him out of harm's way.
After a moment's pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched out and made
tolerable headway. The others rapidly followed. Each one, as it
started upward, from a sudden impulse, contemptuously saluted the
abandoned nest with its excrement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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