ADVENTURES WITH BIRDS OF PREY 



123 



mountainsi d e. 

 The female duck 

 hawk on the other 

 side of the cliff 

 screamed and cir- 

 cled above us, giv- 

 ing an occasional 

 backward glance 

 over her shoulder 

 to see if her eggs 

 were unharmed. 



If she did not 

 return quickly 

 after our depar- 

 ture, the male 

 would drop from 

 the sky hundreds 

 of feet above the 

 cliff and force the 

 female back to 

 her nest by a 

 series of lightning 

 stoops. Every 

 time the female 

 flew away from 

 the cliff, the tier- 

 cel would head 

 her off and drive 

 her back. 



Finally she 

 would return, 

 subdued, to incu- 

 bate her eggs, 

 while the raven, 

 near by, hastily 

 fed her young, 

 both unaware 

 that their family 

 life was being 

 recorded by the 

 big bright camera 

 eye that had 

 frightened them 

 so much. 



After frequent visits, we saw the young 

 ravens safely out of the nest and on the 

 wing, but fate decreed that the young duck 

 hawks then forming in the egg were never 

 to feel the swish of air on their streamlined 

 bodies. We climbed the cliff one day to 

 find that some predatory animal, probably 

 following our trail across the cliff, had eaten 

 and destroyed the eggs of this monarch of 

 the skies. 



We were disappointed that we couldn't 

 get our pictures, but it was worse to know 

 that four young duck hawks, of which there 

 are already too few, would never hunt over 

 those valleys and mountains. 



A HAWK S-EYE VIEW OF THE PHOTOGRAPHERS BLIND 



The burlap hides a seat built in the top crotch of a leafy tulip tree in Chevy 

 Chase, Maryland. From this blind the authors took motion pictures of red- 

 shouldered hawks (page 121), beside whose nest Frank Craighead stood when 

 he made this photograph of his brother. 



We soon located another nest, high on 

 the face of a particularly dangerous cliff 

 overlooking a small town, and with two 

 friends we set out to climb the steep moun- 

 tainside. 



DANGLING IN SPACE 



When we finally reached the top of the 

 cliff we were tired and hot, but one look 

 over that perpendicular drop of 300 feet 

 sent our temperatures down a number of de- 

 grees. It was like looking straight down 

 the side of the Washington Monument. We 

 were used to climbing cliffs, however, and 

 realized that once over the edge we would 



