The Spring of the Year

great swamp, as I was, and if the great-winged buzzards had been soaring, soaring up in your sky, as all through my boyhood they were soaring

not the only two boys in all the world to do great and wonderful deeds. Any boy with a love for birds and a lon

nd lived my first ten years only a little farther off, yet it was not until after twice ten years of absence that

ey-wide, gloomy, silent, and to me,-for I still thought of it as I used to when a child,-to me, a mysterious realm of

s, secret, and unapproachable in the deep, dark swamp; and, in the sky, so wide were his wings, so majest

ton, I glanced up and saw, sailing at a far height against the billowy clouds, an aeroplane; and what should I think of but the fligh

see the nest of this strange bird that had been flying, flying forever in my imagination and in my sky. B

any things that you want to do. Never mind. If you want to see a buzzard's ne

ere at last I stood; and yonder on the clouds, a mere mote in the distance,

ld have at least a guide to lead me through the shadow land, for out of the lower living green towered a line of limbless stubs, like a line of telegraph-poles, their bleached bones gleaming white, or showing dark and gaunt against the horizon, and marking for me a path far out acr

stance, and, while still invisible to my eyes, had started down to perch upon that giant stub in order to watch me. It was suspicious, and had come to watch me

o the deep underbrush, the buzzard perched against the sky for my guide,

of the sky and the buzzard. It was not until half an hour's struggle that, climbin

had become solitary, their comrades having fallen one by one; while some of them, unable to loose their grip upon the soil, which had w

ever seen. It was not the highest, nor the largest round, perhaps, but in years and looks the

bene an au

th many a

thing beside the oak, yet how unmistakably the gnarled old monarch wore the crown! His girth more than balanced the poplar's greater height; and, as

llen pine that lay in my course, I was startled by the burrh! burrh! burrh! of three partridges taking wing just beyond, near the foot of the tree. Their exploding

lly washed down into a mound on each side of the butt, where it lay high and dry above the level of the wet swamp. This the swamp birds had turned into a great dust-bath. It was in constant use, evidently. Not a spear of grass had sprouted in it, and all over it were pits and craters o

buzzard saw me, too, and began to twist its head and to twitch its wing-tips nervously. Then the long, black wings began to open, as you wo

arther than my nose. A half-rotten tree-trunk lay near, the top end resting across the backs of several saplings that it had borne down in its fall. I crept up on this for a l

ite oak, had been girdled and felled with an axe, by coon-hunters probably, and still lay with one side resti

as greeted with hisses from far back in the dark. Then came a thumping of bare

TURKEY

g cavern floor, and in the course of their incubation must have rolled clear down to the opposite end, where the opening was s

ut his mother's, and she hates the sight of him. Elsewhere I have told of a buzzard that devoured her eggs

, as young owls are, with deep snow-white down, out of which protruded their black scaly, snaky legs. They stood braced on these long black

the mouth. The air was musty inside, yet surprisingly free from odor. The floor was absolutely clean, but on the top and sides

sat near the mouth of the hollow, where I could catch the fresh breeze that pulled across the end, and where I had a view of a far-away bit of sky. Suddenly, across t

out with a dozen kinds of cramps, the unworried moth