0^ 



half in age, and the other about a week or so 

 old. The female Owl stayed in the vicinity of 

 the nest, all the time and was very wrought -up 

 over our intrusion. She kept moving about eon- 

 4fe tinually end every minute or no she would utter 

 a soft 'hoo-o-n' , 



We left this nest and proceeded on to the 

 other nest in that part of" the woods which had 

 been in use the year before. On arriving within? 

 f^Ast sight of the nest the female left the nest. In 



order to determine if there was g- possibility of 

 ^ the nest containing eggs without actually climb 

 ing the tree we hit upon this plan: The Eagle 

 had seen us in the woods and of course knew of 

 presence; if two of us went on past the nest and 

 out of that section of the woods while the third 

 man hid himself well, wouldn't the hird return 

 to her task of incubating when she saw the two 

 leave the vicinity of the nest? T * T e reasoned that 

 the Bald Eagle is not intelligent enough to 

 realize that one man has disappeared . if there • 

 were young in the nest she would make a lot of 

 fuss over our presence. She did raise some ob- 

 jection but soon flew away. T ' T hen she had gone, 

 I carefully hid myself under one of the many 

 entanglements of honeysuckle , bushes, briars, 

 and small trees which cover the floor of the 

 woods. In a few minutes, after Dad and lack had 

 had time to get a sufficient distance away from 

 the nest the female bird did return. I had 

 chosen as my place of concealment, a thick un- 

 dergrowth within fifty yards of the base of the 

 tree in which the nest was located, when the 

 huge bird returned to the tree it sounded like 

 an airplane gliding very close overhead so great 

 was the rush of air through the birds feathers, i 

 She came to rest on a big limb which supported 

 the nest - after carefully surveying the woods 

 all around, she hopped over onto the nest and 

 settled down upon it. From this action we con- 

 cluded that there must be eggs in the nest. 



l then made arrangements to climb up to the 

 nest; I took a small gas-mask bag up with me, 

 in which 1 had placed my camera, some long cord ! 

 and a hunting knife. The tree was about 90' in 



