74 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
horned owl begins its nest, until the goldfinch lays 
her white eggs in July, the four spend every holiday 
and vacation hunting birds’ nests. 
Personally I collect only notes, out-of-door secrets, 
and little everyday adventures. Bird-songs, flower- 
fields, and friendships with the wild-folk mean far 
more to me than cabinets of pierced eggs, dried 
flowers, stuffed birds, and tanned skins. Nor am I 
much of a hunter. When it comes to slaughtering 
defenseless animals with high-powered guns, I prefer 
a position in an abattoir. One can kill more animals 
in a day, and with less exertion. Yet my collecting 
and sporting friends make allowances for my vagaries 
and take me with them on their journeyings. Where- 
fore it happened that in early March I received a 
telegram. ‘‘Raven’s nest located. Come if you are 
man enough.” 
Now a middle-aged lawyer and the father of a 
family has no business ravening along the icy and 
inaccessible cliffs which that gifted fowl prefers for 
nursery purposes. I have, however, a maxim of 
Thoreau which I furbish up for just such occasions. 
““A man sits as many risks as he runs,”’ wrote that 
wanderer in the woods. Accordingly the next morn- 
ing found me two hundred miles to the north, plod- 
ding through a driving snow-storm toward Seven 
Mountains, with the first man in recent years to find 
the nest of a northern raven in Pennsylvania. 
For fifteen freezing miles we clambered over and 
around three of the seven. By the middle of the 
afternoon we reached a cliff hidden behind thickets 
