166 THE LOG OF THE SUN 



its mate a little brown female, a pinioned bird, and 

 refused to desert her even when the brood of sum- 

 mer ducklings was being caught and pinioned. 

 Such devotion is rare indeed. 



In the top of one of the most inaccessible trees 

 in the Park a great rough nest of sticks shows 

 where a pair of black-crowned night herons have 

 made their home for years, and from the pale 

 green eggs hatch the most awkward of nestling 

 herons, which squawk and grow to their prime, on 

 a diet of small fish. When they are able to fly 

 they pay frequent visits to their relations in the 

 great flying cage, perching on the top and gazing 

 with longing eyes at the abundant feasts of fish 

 which are daily brought by the keepers to their 

 charges. This duck and heron are the only ones 

 of their orders thus to honour the Park by nesting, 

 although a number of other species are not uncom- 

 mon during the season of migration. 



Of the waders which in the spring and fall 

 teeter along the bank of the Bronx Eiver, only a 

 pair or two of spotted sandpipers remain through- 

 out the nesting period, content to lay their eggs 

 in some retired spot in the corner of a field, where 

 there is the least danger to them and to the fluffy 

 balls of long-legged down which later appear and 

 scurry about. The great horned owl and the red- 

 tailed hawk formerly nested in the park, but the 

 frequent noise of blasting and the building opera- 

 tions have driven them to more isolated places, 



