©be Warbler 



A FULL BROOD OF KRIDER'S HAWK 



watched a red-tailed hawk disputing domain, at his nest, with a man who 

 does not profess to be wise at all. Yet, a few things were learned, that sun- 

 set hour. The violet-green swallows were winnowing and diving about the 

 sister butte; (a rock-mass more interesting, if possible, than her larger, haugh- 

 tier fellow.) A pair of rock wrens were exercising all their ingenuity to 

 draw away from their hidden young a mortal who heeded them not; a pair 

 of blue birds were equally solicitous for lusty and noisy young that were 

 hidden somewhere in a cavity in the nose of the krider-cliff; and, — the sun, 

 provokingly, kept going down ! 



It was daylight, on the Fourth of July. Family-less, for the time be- 

 ing, one scorned to waste the day over petty patriotic fizz and bang: he 

 would spend the day with his Krider Hawks. Hardly had the last gate 

 been passed at the entrance of Skull Creek, when Pater Krider emerged out 

 of nothingness upon the scene. Along his old roadway he came, entering 

 the eastern jaw of the mouth of Skull Creek Canyon. Right across he 

 went, straight as any bird might fly; and in his talons, heldpendently by the 

 head, was a four-foot bull-snake. (They grow, rarely, to eight feet, by the 

 foot-rule, in Wyoming) ! 



My plan, that day, was to make a full survey of the fortress rock. Ap- 

 proaching the front, with this in view, I saw, to my surprise, one of the 

 young hawks crouching in the hollows at the base of the rocks. 



He would seem to have fallen off the ledge, in some, way . Perhaps he 

 had toppled over backward after too eager a jerk at 'the tough bull-snake 

 brought for his dinner, one day. At any rate, here he was, — craw empty, 



