i82 THE CONDOR Vol.. IX 



the fairly level top. Just below the north margin, overlooking a panorama beau- 

 tiful beyond words, I could see, as I crept nearer and nearer, the stipplings of bird- 

 lime which, as seen from below, had attracted me to that profile of the butte. 

 There, surely, lay a hidden ledge. Only its outer edge could be seen. The female 

 7nii.st be there: why could I not dislodge her? Back to the south, a dozen feet from 

 the north brink, stood a flag propped up by fragments of the soft, rough, nodular 

 chalk-rock: did the Falcons put it there as a mark of eminent domain ? 



Descending I viewed the environ of the north ledge from the ground. It 

 seemed a full thousand feet above me; and full-dangerous of approach. The male 

 falcon was on the watch. His caution did not desert him; nor did his anxious- 

 ness. Anon he would make a sally and a survey in my direction, returning then 

 to his favored perch. There he would crouch, eyes fixed upon me, in what seemed 

 to me an attitude of reproach. 



With a crooked stick for a probe I regained the summit. The ledge was 

 essayed. But it proved as futile, as bafiiing as ever. And the female refused to 

 dislodge. A sickening feeling of disappointment began to creep over me. Slowly 

 I descended. A tour of the butte gave me the petty solace of a few remains of 

 falcon-prey: mostly flight feathers of the Red-shaftad Flicker. Then back to town 

 I slowly crawled. The flicker mementoes were lost, on the way. The negatives, 

 taken with such care, proved hopelessly blackened. 



Nevertheless, back I came the following May. One had learned a little. It 

 seemed clear that my falcons had wholly outwitted me; and that I had never 

 scanned the real nesting place at all. On this second visit the old male falcon 

 tactics were repeated. A few wide sallies were made, yet the "manner", this time, 

 was quite as it had been before. But finally, to my surprise, the bird disappeared. 



At intervals of camera work, beneath the shadowing of a friendly little bull- 

 pine, I lay down to rest. Virtually I was hidden. The male falcon suddenly 

 appeared. And his manner noxv was nonchalant. A quick reconnoitre on his 

 part made it plain that there was no eyrie on the north end of the butte. Amid 

 the quick bewilderment that struck me, the falcon suddenly "swept right into the 

 heart of the west facade, and bent his way upward with consummate grace. And 

 there, from a pot-hole previously unperceived by me, his mate came out to meet 

 him with quivering wings and a little cry. Fain would I try them both, now, to 

 see what both would do, together. Out in the open I came; and crept along the 

 foot of the cliff. 



The male seemed now to feel at ease. He had done his duty. On some jut- 

 ting ledge or nodule, above my head, he would perch for moments at a time; and 

 what a spectacle of unconquered pride and beauty he made, as he sat there, sun- 

 glorified; while the field-glass brought him — splendid plumage, olive-yellow legs, 

 flashing eyes — all within arm's-length of me! 



Not thus, the sitting mate. She never rested, was seldom silent. The same, 

 soft, mellow quavering cry which I have so often heard emitted by some solicitous 

 Rough-leg circling her snowy young in their hill-side nest on some steep North 

 Dakota gorge, resounded now, from the mother Prairie Falcon, ceaselessly. Mean- 

 while, in great circles, now from the one side and now from another she swept 

 down at me with that apparent mingling of anger and fear so fascinating in any 

 wild mother. So close would she come, at times, that I could almost fancy the 

 whiffing of her wings upon my face. Sometimes from the base and again from the 

 top of the butte I watched and tested the birds. Yet nearness from above seemed 

 in no sense to increase the female's solicitude; nor did one's withdrawing part way 

 down the incline, appear to abate it. Then, suddenly, as if in concerted plan, 



