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 



