As for myself, I am sure that Deedeeaskh could never make up his mind what to think of me. At first, when I came, he would cry out a danger note that brought the fishhawks circling over their nest, looking down into the underbrush with wild yellow eyes to see what danger threatened. But after I had hidden myself away a few times, and made no motion to disturb either the nest or the hungry prowlers that came to feast on the fishhawks’ bounty, Deedeeaskh set me down as an idle, harmless creature who would, nevertheless, bear watching. He never got over his curiosity to know what brought me there. Sometimes, when I thought him far away, I would find him suddenly on a branch just over my head, looking down at me intently. When I went away he would follow me, whistling, to my canoe; but he never called the fishhawks again, unless some unusual action of mine aroused his suspicion; and after one look they would circle away, as if they knew they had nothing to fear. They had seen me fishing so often that they thought they understood me, undoubtedly.
There was one curious habit of these birds that I had never noticed before. Occasionally, when the weather threatened a change, or when the birds and their little ones had fed full, Ismaques would mount up to an enormous altitude, where he would sail about in slow circles, his broad vans steady to the breeze, as if he were an ordinary hen hawk, enjoying himself and contemplating the world from an indifferent distance. Suddenly, with one clear, sharp whistle to announce his intention, he would drop like a plummet 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.
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 fishhawk language to come across and get it; while the young birds, on their part, stretched wings and necks hungrily and tried to whistle the fish over to them, as one would call a dog across the street.