HUNTING WITH 



eagles screamed 

 with anticipation 

 at his approach. 

 The picture im- 

 pressed upon my 

 mind was well 

 worth all the fa- 

 tigue of the jour- 

 ney up the moun- 

 tain and the long 

 wait on the hard 

 rock at the edge 

 of the canyon. 



EAVESDROPPING 



AT AN eagle's 



NEST 



A few days 

 later Bob Nied- 

 rach led us to an- 

 other eagle's nest, 

 in Willow Tree 

 Canyon near 

 Denver, where 

 we could actually 

 drive the sound 

 truck almost to 

 the cliff's edge. 



We padded the 

 microphone, lest 

 it strike a rock, 

 and let it down 

 about 60 feet on 

 its cable to the 

 nesting ledge. 

 Then, concealing 

 the trucks in a 

 grove of pines 

 near bv, we spent 

 the night on the 

 bunks within 

 them. 



The next morn- 

 ing at daybreak 

 we clamped on 

 the earphones to 



learn what was happening at the nest, 

 which, of course, we could not see. It was 

 interesting to hear the many species of 

 birds in the canyon below greet the new 

 day with their various twitterings, screech- 

 ings, or carols. 



There was a canyon wren, too far away 

 to record, whose song, a series of rich, de- 

 scending whistles, came through beauti- 

 fully. A red-shafted flicker called close at 

 hand. A black-headed grosbeak and a west- 

 ern tanager, with songs almost exactly like 

 our eastern rose-breasts and scarlet tana- 



IVORYBILLS change places THE FIRST PHOTOGR.APH EVER TAKEN 



OF A NESTING PAIR 



The ivory-billed woodpecker is now perhaps the rarest North American bird 

 and from time to time has been thought extinct, though it formerly was found 

 locally throughout the Gulf States and as far north in the Mississippi Valley as 

 southern Indiana. The species is about the size of a crow, and the male has a 

 flaming red crest, that of the female being black. 



gers, could be heard faintly up the canyon. 

 A long-crested jay screeched and a flock of 

 violet-green swallows and white-throated 

 swifts came forth from the crannies in the 

 rocks and twittered past the microphone. 



About 7:30 a loud crackling in the 

 "mike" told us that the eaglets had arisen 

 and were doing their daily dozen — jumping 

 up and down on the nest and fanning their 

 wings. 



About 8 o'clock they began to scream, 

 and looking out of the truck window we 

 could see one of the parent birds coming 



