4 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. VII 
scheming and a risk of life and limb to reach some of them. We schemed for three 
different summers after we found this aerie of the red-tail before we finally suc- 
ceeded in leveling our camera 
at the eggs. The nest-tree 
measured over fourteen feet 
around at the bottom. There 
was not a limb for forty feet. 
The nest itself was lodged 
just one hundred and twenty 
feet up. It was out of the 
question to clamber up such a 
tree with climbers, ropes, or 
anything else, but we had an- 
other plan. 
We had spotted a young 
cottonwood just fifteen feet 
away. This might serve as a 
ladder so we chopped at the 
base till it began to totter. 
With ropes we pulled it over. 
The crown lodged in the 
branches of the first large 
limb of the nest-tree full forty 
feet up. This formed a shaky 
aerial bridge, up which we 
clambered a third of a distance 
to the nest. The anticipation 
led us on. We lassoed upper 
branches, dug our climbing- 
irons into the bark and worked 
slowly up. 
We found a stack of sticks 
the size of a small haycock. 
They were not pitched to- 
gether helter-skelter. A big 
nest like a hawk’s or heron’s 
always gives me the impress- 
ion that it is easily thrown 
together. I examined this 
one and found it as carefully 
woven as a wicker basket. It 
was strong at every point. 
Sticks over a yard in length 
and some as big as your 
wrist were all worked into a 
compact mass. In the hol- 
lowed top on some bark and 
leaves lay the two eggs. 
I never saw a more com- 
manding stronghold. It over looked the country for miles in evefy direction. From 
where the hawk-mother brooded her eggs I looked out far up the Columbia, and I 
POSITION OF NEST, SHOWING OPPOSITE LIMB FROM WHICH 
PHOTOGRAPHER WORKED 
