WILD WINGS 
328 
My next visit to the owl’s nest was on the sixth of April, 
this time with my wife. The thaw was well under way, and 
the condition of the mountain roads something dreadful. The 
owl was on her nest as before. My purpose now was to set 
the camera near the nest and make the exposures from a blind 
with a thread just as she alighted, upon her return. She 
allowed me to climb the same tree as before, but flew just as 
I reached the place for the camera, when I called to my com¬ 
panion. On the edge of the nest was part of a rabbit, and 
snuggled down deep in the middle was a heap of white down, 
the owl’s young. 
While setting the camera, I was unlucky enough to tip my 
carrving-case too far over, and all my plate-holders went 
scaling down upon the carpet of dead leaves and sticks forty 
feet below. My feelings may be imagined as I resigned 
myself to the thought of having had the day’s hard drive for 
nothing. I felt wonderfully better when it was announced 
that only one of the plate-holders was broken, and that the 
plates in the rest seemed to be sound. Lowering my thread, 
one of the holders was fastened on, which I then drew up and 
inserted in the camera. The latter was duly focused on the 
nest, and I then attached the thread to the shutter, set for 
an exposure, dropped the spool end to the ground, and 
descended. 
The place that I selected for our ambush was a thick clump 
of green mountain laurel, about a hundred yards from the 
nest. To this spot I carefully laid out the line of thread, made 
a dry seat of bark and overcoats, and then began the vigil, 
hardly moving my eyes from the nest, which I could see 
through an opening in the leaves. For quite a while not a 
sound broke the stillness. Then a pair of Downy Woodpeckers 
began to tap on a tree, and, coming near us, to go through 
their mating antics. Soon after this a Red-shouldered Hawk 
