74 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



horned owl begins its nest, until the goldfinch lays 

 her white eggs in July, the four spend every holiday 

 and vacation hunting birds' nests. 



Personally I collect only notes, out-of-door secrets, 

 and little everyday adventures. Bird-songs, flower- 

 fields, and friendships with the wild-folk mean far 

 more to me than cabinets of pierced eggs, dried 

 flowers, stuffed birds, and tanned skins. Nor am I 

 much of a hunter. When it comes to slaughtering 

 defenseless animals with high-powered guns, I prefer 

 a position in an abattoir. One can kill more animals 

 in a day, and with less exertion. Yet my collecting 

 and sporting friends make allowances for my vagaries 

 and take me with them on their journeyings. Where- 

 fore it happened that in early March I received a 

 telegram. "Raven's nest located. Come if you are 

 man enough." 



Now a middle-aged lawyer and the father of a 

 family has no business ravening along the icy and 

 inaccessible cliffs which that gifted fowl prefers for 

 nursery purposes. I have, however, a maxim of 

 Thoreau which I furbish up for just such occasions. 

 "A man sits as many risks as he runs," wrote that 

 wanderer in the woods. Accordingly the next morn- 

 ing found me two hundred miles to the north, plod- 

 ding through a driving snow-storm toward Seven 

 Mountains, with the first man in recent years to find 

 the nest of a northern raven in Pennsylvania. 



For fifteen freezing miles we clambered over and 

 around three of the seven. By the middle of the 

 afternoon we reached a cliff hidden behind thickets 



