File:American birds, studied and photographed from life (1907) (14770303363).jpg

Identifier: americanbirdsstu00finl (find matches)
Title: American birds, studied and photographed from life
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Finley, William L. (William Lovell), 1876-1953
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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. If It were not for the birds ofprey, the balance of nature would surely swing very muchagainst those who till the soil. A red-tail likes a high, commanding site for a nest,just as a mallard searches the sedge grass about a pondfor a home, and the pair of hawks In the cottonwood hadsurely found it. We schemed for three different summers,after we found this aerie of the red-tail, before we finallysucceeded In levelling our camera at the eggs. The nesttree measured over fourteen feet around at the bottom.There was not a limb for forty feet. The nest itself waslodged just one hundred and twenty feet up. It was outof the question to clamber up such a tree with climbers,ropes, or anything else, but we had another plan. We had spotted a young cottonwood just fifteen feetaway. This might serve as a ladder, so we chopped atthe base till It began to totter. With ropes we pulled Itover. The crown lodged in the branches of the first largelimb of the nesting tree, full forty feet up. This formed
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At the foot of the Hawks tree. Aerie of the Red-tail in the tall cottonwood. The Red-tailed Hawk 59 a shaky bridge, up which we clambered a third of theway to the nest. Hope led us on. We lassoed upperbranches, dug our climbing-irons into the bark and workedslowly up. We found a stack of sticks the size of a small hay-cock. They were not pitched together helter-skelter. Abig nest like a hawks or herons always gives me the im-pression that it is easily thrown together. I examined thisone and found it as carefully woven as a wicker basket.It was strong at every point. Sticks over a yard in lengthand some as big as your wrist, were all worked into acompact mass. In the hollowed top, on some bark andleaves, lay the two eggs. I never saw a more commanding stronghold. It over-looked the country for miles in every direction. Fromwhere the hawk mother brooded her eggs I looked outfar up the Columbia, and I could see the cavern-cut slopesof Mount Hood. Extending to the westward was the longlin

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