THE BALD EAGLE 133 



a nest not more than twenty feet from the ground. I do 

 not believe she had been living in this vicinity long, for 

 I had never noticed her until about the time she began 

 building. She would fly down the river to a shallow a 

 short way from where I stayed and would then hover over 

 the river very much as a sparrow hawk hovers over a 

 meadow when he has seen a mouse. This hawk would 

 hang over that spot almost motionless, except for the flap- 

 ping of her wings, for what seemed to be several minutes, 

 when suddenly she would set her wings and dive headlong 

 into the water. She was usually forty or fifty feet above 

 the surface when she made her dive and would plunge 

 completely under the water and sometimes remain sub- 

 merged as long as a half minute. Then she would rise 

 from the surface and, flapping heavily, mount into the 

 air, often carrying a sucker eighteen inches or two feet 

 long and as thick through as my arm at the shoulder. 



One day in May I was watching her when I heard a 

 scream in the direction of the mountain and looking around 

 saw a bald eagle flying as rapidly as possible toward the 

 hawk. Evidently the hawk had not been molested before, 

 for she made no attempt to escape, but flew directly 

 toward her nest, where my visit that afternoon had showed 

 that she had youngsters. The eagle, being a more rapid 

 flyer and not being burdened by a load, gained rapidly. 

 When within perhaps fifty feet he again uttered his scream 

 of defiance and struck straight for the hawk. She dodged 

 and the eagle missed. Rising in a few short circles he 

 again drove for the hawk and struck her full in the back. 

 Tho a handful of feathers were torn from her back, evi- 

 dently the eagle did not care to do real damage or pos- 

 sibly he had missed a direct blow. The hawk gave a cry 



