Che Buzzard of he Wear Swamp 
the backs of several saplings which it had borne down 
in its fall. I crept up on this for a look around, and 
almost tumbled off at finding myself staring directly 
into the dark, cavernous hollow of an immense log 
lying on a slight rise of ground a few feet ahead of 
me. 
It was a yawning hole, which at a glance I knew 
belonged to the buzzard. The log, a mere shell of a 
mighty white oak, had been girdled and felled with an 
axe, by coon hunters, probably, and still lay with one 
side resting upon the rim of the stump. As I stood 
looking, something white stirred vaguely in the hole 
and disappeared. 
Leaping from my perch, I scrambled forward to the 
mouth of the hollow and was greeted with hisses from 
far back in the dark. Then came a thumping of bare 
feet, more hisses, and a sound of snapping beaks. I 
had found my buzzard’s nest. 
Hardly that, either, for there was not a feather, 
stick, or chip as evidence of a nest. The eggs had 
been laid upon the sloping cavern floor, and in the 
course of their incubation must have rolled clear 
down to the opposite end, where the opening was so 
narrow that the buzzard could not have brooded them 
197 
