4 THE CONDOR VoL. VII scheming and a risk ot 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 snc- 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 heroh'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 oom- mahdirig stronghold. It over looked the country for miles in every direction. From where the hawk-mother brooded her eggs I looked out far up the Columbia, and I
