“THE LAST AMERICAN ” 301 
tilted his planes and rose yet higher, to escape ob- 
servation. But the osprey was watching the 
water. He, too, was hungry. Far below Baldy, 
he too circled, a smaller bird, but still impressive, 
with his five-foot spread of wing. Had Baldy 
been a philosopher, he would have reflected that 
the fish hawk, also, even as himself, was fighting 
an unequal battle against man, not so much, per- 
haps, to protect its nest of sticks in a tree top by 
the pond, as to find food in the ponds and streams 
where once fish were so abundant. Residents by 
the seashore can have little idea how rare a fish 
hawk has become by inland waters, except in the 
migration seasons. Even Baldy himself, in fact, 
knew of no other hereabouts. But Baldy was 
not philosophizing just then. He was thinking 
only of fish, and watching the hawking bird be- 
low him, on whose sleek back the sunlight flashed. 
Slowly and still as a feather falling he wound his 
way down the invisible spirals of the air to be near 
his prey, until he, too, could see right through the 
brown, sun-flecked water of the pond to the sand 
and weeds on the bottom, and his eyes caught the 
ghost-wraith of a pickerel moving languidly 
