THE RAVEN'S NEST 81 



and slept and slept and slept. Long after I have for- 

 gotten the difference between a tort and a contract 

 and whether A. Edward Newton or Marie Corelli 

 wrote the "Amenities," that dinner and that sleep 

 will stand out in my memory. 



The next morning we started off again in a driving 

 snowstorm, to look at another nest some ten miles 

 farther on. The first bird we met was a prairie 

 horned lark flying over the valley, with its curious 

 tossing, mounting flight, like a bunch of thistle-down. 

 It differs from the more common horned, or shore, 

 lark by having a white instead of a yellow throat and 

 eye-line; and it nests in the mountain meadows in 

 upper Pennsylvania, while its larger brother breeds in 

 the far north. 



Noon found us at a deer camp. Through the un- 

 curtained windows we could see the mounted body of 

 a golden eagle, which, after stalking and destroying 

 one by one a whole flock of wild turkeys, had come 

 to an ignoble end while gorged on the carcass of a 

 dead deer. The man who captured it by throwing his 

 coat over its head thought at first that it was a turkey 

 buzzard, which southern bird, curiously enough, 

 finds its way through the valleys up into these north- 

 ern mountains. In fact, the Collector once found a 

 buzzard's nest just across a ravine from the nest of 

 a raven. Beyond the camp, on the other side of a 

 rushing torrent, we found another raven's nest sway- 

 ing in the gale, in the very top of a slender forty-foot 

 white pine, the only raven's nest the Collector had 

 ever found in a tree. It was deserted, and we reached 



