298 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
of his own life and the perpetuation of his 
breed. 
And how long it took his brood of young to 
put on their wing feathers and escape at last from 
the terrible conspicuousness of the nest into the 
freedom and concealment of the forest! Baldy 
might well have envied the robins and sparrows 
and the other little birds who get their broods 
quickly out and foraging, or especially the pretty 
brown grouse whose chicks can scurry into the 
protection of the undergrowth almost as soon as 
they break the shell. While his two fledglings 
were still more white than brown, and quite help-, 
less, a mother partridge in the forest below, not 
three hundred yards from the eagle tree, was 
leading her twelve or fourteen chicks, little puffs 
of daintiness, into the shelter of last year’s leaves. 
It would be August before his young hopefuls, 
still without the proud white collar and white 
fanned tail, but brown all over save for little 
streaks of white, would be able to mount the nest 
rim, hop up on a branch of the hemlock, look 
scared and stupid, and then fall off into clumsy 
flight, while he and their mother swooped over- 
