for a thousand feet, catch himself in
mid-air, and zigzag down to the nest in the spruce top, whirling,
diving, tumbling, and crying aloud the while in wild, ecstatic
exclamations,--just as a woodcock comes whirling, plunging, twittering
down from a height to his brown mate in the alders below. Then Ismaques
would mount up again and repeat his dizzy plunge, while his larger mate
stood quiet in the spruce top, and the little fishhawks tiptoed about
the edge of the nest, _pip-pipping_ their wonder and delight at their
own papa's dazzling performance.

This is undoubtedly one of Ismaques' springtime habits, by which he
tries to win an admiring look from the keen yellow eyes of his mate; but
I noticed him using it more frequently as the little fishhawks' wings
spread to a wonderful length, and he was trying, with his mate, by every
gentle means to induce them to leave the nest. And I have
wondered--without being able at all to prove my theory--whether he were
not trying in this remarkable way to make his little ones want to fly by
showing them how wonderful a thing flying could be made to be.

[Illustration]

A School for Little Fishermen

[Illustration]

There came a day when, as I sat fishing among the rocks, the cry of the
mother osprey changed as she came sweeping up to my fishing
grounds,--_Chip, ch'wee! Chip, chip, ch'weeeee?_ That was the
fisherman's hail plainly enough; but there was another note in it, a
look-here cry of triumph and satisfaction. Before I could turn my head,
for a fish was nibbling, there came other sounds behind it,--_Pip, pip,
pip, ch'weee! pip, ch'wee! pip, ch'weeee!_ a curious medley, a hail of
good-luck cries; and I knew without turning that two other fishermen had
come to join the brotherhood.

The mother bird--one can tell her instantly by her greater size and
darker breast markings--veered in as I turned to greet the newcomers,
and came directly over my head, her two little ones flapping lustily
behind her. Two days before, when I went down to another lake on an
excursion after bigger trout, the young fishhawks were still standing
on the nest, turning a deaf ear to all the old birds' assurances that
the time had come to use their big wings. The last glimpse I had of them
through my glass showed me the mother bird in one tree, the father in
another, each holding a fish, which they were showing the young across a
tantalizing short stretch of empty air, telling the young in fis