58 THE CONDOR Vol. XV earth is quickly despatched, and he is off again, while the slow eye, especially of the breeder of hens, settles upon the soaring Buteo as the presumptive culprit. While his visits to the poultry yard are by no means rare, and his offenses, judged from this narrow human angle, are serious, we shall not stop to plead the thou- sands of destructive squirrels which this bird accounts for, but only hasten on to view him, or rather her, at home. The first scene is a wild adobe amphitheater, the most distant in the "gen- eral view" herewith presented. A few shrubs manage to cling to the upper o reaches of the great earthen funnel; but as the walls descend the pitch increases,
. ,, ? ?-- .? , ?"';
Fig. 11. CAUGI-I? A? HOME: FEI?A?,E PRAIRIE FAI,(2Ol?I until the vortex, 4oo feet below, is fronted by walls perpendicular, or even un- dercut. Here at a point midway of the basal wall, Truesdale's practiced eye dis- cerned a Prairie Falcon squatting upon a shady shelf. I sto.od on the very upper- most brim of the funnel whose edges fell away sharply on either hand, and from my station it did not seem that a' bird could ? find footing, let alone lodgment, on the wall against which this Falcon had set herself. Yet a determined facing of the problem of approach brought a sure solution. We set an iron peg down some forty feet over the brim, then made fast and cast off the 6o-foot rope with which we were provided, and found that it thus exceeded the nest by fifteen feet. To. havf.
