Page:Bird-lore Vol 08.djvu/21

 An Experience in Tree-top Photography TWO NEWLY HATCHED BROAD-WINGED HAWKS ONE EGG WHrCH HATCHED LATER and, by using a pocket wrench, could easily be forced into the hardest green wood. Since my last visit, the third egg had hatched and all the young were now covered with down resembling wool of a dirty, or buffy white color. Feathers were appear- ing on breast and wings. The young- sters appeared sleepy; in fact, one picture was taken as they lay with their eyes closed. The mother bird had brought more material to the nest, twigs of cedar and beech with the beech leaves largely developed. In the arrangement of the beech twigs there was just a suggestion that they may have been so placed for shade, as the situation of the nest was rather open and some rays of the sun seemed always upon the young. But this may have been only a fancy. From among the sticks of the nest I picked up some freshly disgorged pellets, composed mostly of the fur of such small mammals as mice, moles, shrews, etc., with some remains of insects hard to identify, and part of a large black ant. There were also traces of the feathers of some small bird. Around the tree on the ground were the discarded egg-shells that had simply been thrown overboard when the young Hawks had no further use for them. There seemed to be no special care to conceal the location of the nest. The leaves of the beech and even of neighboring trees were stained in every direction by the excrement of the young. Some of the stains were as much as seven or eight feet from the nest horizontally, though on a slightly lower plane. On this trip I took with me a box covered with burlap and with a hole in one end to suggest a lens. This dummy camera I nailed to a limb four or five feet from the nest, expecting the old bird to become so familiar with it that later it could be replaced by the camera similarly covered {a la Her- bert K. Job), and a picture obtained of the mother bird when she visited her young. On June 9, as I approached the nest, the old Hawk appeared for the first time, flying screaming through the wood. The young Hawks certainly had not been neglected since my last visit. They seemed twice the size of a week ago. As my head appeared above the edge of the nest all three