If there are nesting activities on, they are conducted sub rosa. There is 

 no eagerness to display domestic secrets. These must be ferreted out. But 

 there is lavish display of romantic interest. Males are chirping loudly from 

 vantage points; and as often as one of them discovers a female, presumably un- 

 engaged, he darts down into her neighborhood, then sidles over toward her, hat 

 in hand, so to speak, and pours forth a strident flood of amorous professions. 

 The antics in which one of these hot-hearted bachelors engages are lush beyond 

 description. If the lady will endure his presence at all, the male fairly perspires 

 adoration. His wings quiver and his whole frame trembles. He turns about, 

 slowly, in order that his enamorata may see how his every feather is engulfed; 

 or if he pauses, he puts up a wing affectedly, as though to shield himself from the 

 lady's overpowering glances. If the lady is cold — cold, but not impossible, 

 in the very extremity of despair the smitten one procures a wisp of straw, seizing 

 it by the middle, and bearing it about like a huge moustachio, the while his 

 eloquent pleas are pouring forth. By this act, of course, he signifies that he 

 speaks of conjugal affection. The lady must be won to a sense of responsibility. 

 The days are long but the snows are melting. "Oh, will you? won't you? say, 

 why don't you cast your lot with mine?" 



These advances have various denouements. If the female is indeed 

 smitten, as must in the nature of things sometimes happen, the couple adjourn 

 to some cave among the rocks and carry out the purpose of love in secret. If the 

 lady is only shy she sidles off, or flits, and there is instant pursuit. The couple, 

 charge about like meteors amuck, and if they do not dash their brains out, it is 

 good sign that love is not blind. But if, as oftener happens, the lady is either 

 previously engaged, or minded to try out the young swain's professions, she 

 makes spiteful dabs at her admirer while he falls back in pretended and ecstatic 

 alarm. Oftener still, the swain is addressing a lawfully wedded wife, for it 

 seems to be his principle to try all doors till one of them yields. In that case, 

 the lady tells him quickly to be off about his business, and is obeyed, or else — - 

 an avenging bolt falls out of the blue. The lawfully wedded husband, who 

 nine times in ten is on the job, whether near or remote, falls upon that young 

 rascal and either chases him clear out of bounds, or administers an actual drub- 

 bing. There seem to be more males than females, and it is proper form for the 

 ladies to be always attended by their mates in public. 



On this evening in question we followed the fortunes of a score of these 

 advances, and retreats, or sudden flights, but sorted out only two events of any 

 significance: A male bird fed his mate (or young) in a crevice only a dozen 

 feet up on the opposite wall; an unattended female, who fed quietly over the 

 snow for half an hour, had such an authoritative way in "bouncing" her un- 

 welcome admirers, that we kept our eyes focussed upon her ultimate determina- 

 tions. The significant moment came. When the shades of night were gathering 

 thickly she quietly withdrew from the field and lost herself, immediately, in a 

 hole, one of a dozen lying at the back of a great shattered niche in the wall, from 

 which tons of rock — a schistose granite — had recently fallen. This location, 

 if location it was, was forty feet below location No. 1, and fairly in a vertical 

 line with it. 



Fearing above all else a premature attack, we left these prospects to ripen, 

 and visited instead the lower nest, where there was a suspicion of young. Sure 

 enough, there were five youngsters about five days old, in a sturdy nest, which 

 must have held its complement of eggs about June 2nd, the earliest recorded or 

 inferential date for Leucos. 



Days of tireless and all but unrewarded quest followed. Beetling cliffs began 

 to lose something of their terrors, and if a bird disappeared midway on a six • 

 hundred foot precipice, instead of resigning in despair as we had been inclined 

 to do at first, we calculated soberly the chances of approach by wells or ledges, 

 or dangling ropes. A female traced to a hole eighty feet up on a sheer cliff emerg- 

 ed presently with a white foecal sac. No need to bother that nest then. Another, 

 200 feet up and 200 feet over,. seemed more feasible, and we determined to try it 

 later. In the meantime we kept looking for confirmatory evidence regarding 



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