314 
WILD WINGS 
tracts, often in the heart of some p;-reat swamp or on a wild 
mountain-side, and lays its large white eggs — usually but 
two—in the bitterest winter weather, usually the latter part 
of February, or by the very hrst of March. From boyhood 
mv feeling has been that it was a supreme triumph of an 
ornithologist’s held-work to trace out the great feathered tiger 
to its lair, and in j^articular to discover its nest. And when 
came the era of hunting birds with a camera, my highest ideal 
of attaining the dizzy pinnacle of success was to be able to 
]:)hotograph the Great Horned Owl, wild and free, by or u])on 
its nest. 
How vividly I recall the excitement of the discovery of mv 
hrst Great Horned Owl’s eggs. It was in a wild region of 
extensive pine swamps in southeastern Massachusetts. A cer¬ 
tain farmer for thirty years back had heard the hootings of 
a ]:)air of these owls from a lonely swamp, where there still 
remained a rare tract of virgin timber. I asked him to try 
and locate them for me that winter by their hootings, so that 
I might hnd their nest in the S]3ring. 
The time came, at length, for the hunt. It was the eighth 
of March, a hue bright day. Early in the morning I drove 
the eight miles over rough, frozen roads, through a country 
of pine tracts and cedar swamps, to the retired farm. The 
owner told me that lumbermen had been cutting off the old 
swamp, but that the owls had hooted frequently in another 
tract of woods in the opposite direction, where he could often 
hear the crows mobbing them. 
Taking him as guide, we struck into these woods, which 
consisted of tall pines and deciduous timber on swampy land, 
with considerable undergrowth of bushes and horse-briars. 
Our course was well taken, for we had not gone a half-mile 
before a Great Horned Owl ffaj^ped majestically out from 
a tree before us, scaled down toward the ground, and soared 
