How long these great birds live is not known, but I 

 know of one nest, where the male eagle did not return 

 in spring, and within a week or two the surviving 

 widow had found another mate. 



This nest was eighty-five feet high in a big white 

 pine, but I secured a good photograph by climbing 

 a spruce tree that grew on a high ridge about twenty 

 feet from the pine. 



While eagles and ospreys always remain wild, 

 spruce hens and grouse are quite tame in the wilder- 

 ness. One sitting grouse allowed me to clear away the 

 weeds near her nest and even touch her with my hand, 

 before she left the eggs. 



The spruce hens are so tame that they are often 

 called fool hens, but I believe that their apparent 

 tameness has been developed as a means of escape 

 from lynxes and bobcats who hunt by sight and are 

 therefore, less likely to discover a bird sitting still, 

 than one moving about. 



Near streams you may hear the call of the whippoor- 

 will and on burntover ground the night hawks are 

 at home. In cities, the nightmaks frequently raise 

 their young on the flat roof of large office buildings 



On some of the larger inland lakes, the herring 

 gulls and the black cormorants or "nigger geese" are 

 at home on rocky islands, while the herons nest in 

 colonies on high trees. 



The most common birds in Lake Superior and the 

 other Great Lakes are the herring gulls, often called 

 sea gulls. They nest on uninhabited islands, were 

 neither man nor beast can molest their eggs and 

 young. In Lake Superior, they nest in great numbers 



26 



