Gbe Warbler 3 



His heralding "tall was met by answering scream. Then swift from a 

 little ledge which the field-glass but faintly revealed came out the female. 

 The male had found me out; and the two greeted me with oft-repeated and 

 strident "je-e-e-er"-ing. The faint roadway led thru a gate; and still through 

 another gate. Then, crossing a little gorge which seamed the sage-brush it 

 sharply turned along the lower margin of the fortress. The young Krider 

 Hawks, with all a hawk's early-developed intentness, were watching me, 

 quietly: ceasing, for a time, the chicken-chirps with which they had begun 

 to await their prairie-dog feast: when once the parent's voice gave call to 

 luncheon. The shadows were creeping far down the slopes on my return. 

 Both hawks were at home; and they greeted my near approach with increas- 

 ing and angry disquietude. 



Discretion and valor were never more cleverly blended. The passes of 

 the female, (always the proner to let love triumph over caution,) broujdit 

 her often so near that every delicate blending of the softened colors of her 

 race became clearly see-able to the eye. Yet she never perched near. Always 

 a far-away young bull-pine furnished her a perching outlook. 



Laboriously I climbed a crack to reach the over look down to the eyrie; 

 only to laugh at a stupidity which had failed to consider possible gradual 

 approach from the southwest. Yet such there was. Just a steep climb 

 among the talus, well-grown with little pines and ivy, and one might have 

 walked, duffle and all, the entire way to the verge that overlooked the prey. 

 Where the earth of the talus gave way to the seamy, solid sand-rock there 

 lay a gaunt dead pine. The roots were piercing deep into the crevices. 

 The two long, dead arms were far-outstretched over the rock-masses; as if 

 the pine, in life, had sheltered them while one might; and then, when the 

 winds beat her down, had clasped them in her dying embrace. At the end 

 of one arm was a curious "welP'-like hole, some feet down among the shat- 

 tered rocks. Just beyond this was the cliff-verge above the eyrie. Sheer 

 boy-sport it was to lie on one's face and peer over. Some twenty feet lay 

 between one's nose and the ledge whereon rested the nest of the Krider 

 Hawks; and a convenient distance it was. The sticks and turf and sage- 

 stems were clean of excreta; but dirty with much else. On the outer margin 

 lay the well-picked skeleton of a grown bull-snake. This, the eyes revealed: 

 the nose, much else. 



The young hawks were sprouting their flight-feathers. The fulvous 

 natal down, however, gave them still that fascinating cast of texture and 

 color which some of us never tire of gazing upon. Alert the youngsters 

 were; the mere wave of one's hand would bring upward to the rock-edge the 

 glint of their fearless eyes. When the Wise Man wrote about the mystery 

 of "the way of a bird in the air" he was doubtless thinking of the vulture. 

 But the mystery would, of a truth, have deepened for him had he ever 



