XX 



t THE BALD EAGLE 



1 SPENT the summer of 1896 on the banks of the 

 Yellowstone River about eight miles above the city of 

 Livingstone. The River at that point was full of fish of 

 many kinds. In fact, suckers were so plentiful that the 

 man with whom I stayed made it a practise each year" to 

 take a wagon and a pitchfork down to the edge of a 

 shoal and fork out a load of suckers and bury them about 

 his rhubarb, currant, and gooseberry bushes as fertilizer. 



In a scrubby cottonwood tree near where I stayed was 

 the first fish hawk's nest I had ever seen. The fish hawk, 

 or osprey, is very powerful of flight and feeds on fish. I 

 had read of those birds many times and was pleased to 

 find an opportunity to study them at first hand. 



I knew that bald eagles were common in those moun- 

 tains. I had seen the historical eagle's nest on the top 

 of pinnacle rock at the entrance to Yellowstone National 

 Park, a nest that doubtless has been used for fifty years 

 or more, and had found several other nests in the moun- 

 tains. But it did not occur to me that any eagles lived 

 near us, tho I should have known that inaccessible cliffs, 

 a river full of fish, and an osprey's nest were a combina- 

 tion a bald eagle could not resist. 



As I stated beore, the fish hawk had selected a scrubby 

 cottonwood tree for her home, and late in April she built 



132 



