The bald eagle, also, builds on high rocks, according to Audubon, though Wilson describes the nest of one which he saw near Great Egg Harbor, in the top of a large yellow pine.  It was a vast pile of sticks, sods, sedge, grass, reeds, etc., five or six feet high by four broad, and with little or no concavity.  It had been used for many years, and he was told that the eagles made it a sort of home or lodging-place in all seasons.

The eagle in all cases uses one nest, with more or less repair, for several years.  Many of our common birds do the same.  The birds may be divided, with respect to this and kindred points, into five general classes.  First, those that repair or appropriate the last year’s nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others.  Secondly, those that build anew each season, though frequently rearing more than one brood in the same nest.  Of these the phoebe-bird is a well-known example.  Thirdly, those that build a new nest for each brood, which includes by far the greatest number of species.  Fourthly, a limited number that make no nest of their own, but appropriate the abandoned nests of other birds.  Finally, those who use no nest at all, but deposit their eggs in the sand, which is the case with a large number of aquatic fowls.

1866.

VI

THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

On looking at the southern and more distant Catskills from the Hudson River on the east, or on looking at them from the west from some point of vantage in Delaware County, you see, amid the group of mountains, one that looks like the back and shoulders of a gigantic horse.  The horse has got his head down grazing; the shoulders are high, and the descent from them down his neck very steep; if he were to lift up his head, one sees that it would be carried far above all other peaks, and that the noble beast might gaze straight to his peers in the Adirondacks or the White Mountains.  But the lowered head never comes up; some spell or enchantment keeps it down there amid the mighty herd; and the high round shoulders and the smooth strong back of the steed are alone visible.  The peak to which I refer is Slide Mountain, the highest of the Catskills by some two hundred feet, and probably the most inaccessible; certainly the hardest to get a view of, it is hedged about so completely by other peaks,—­the greatest mountain of them all, and apparently the least willing to be seen; only at a distance of thirty or forty miles is it seen to stand up above all other peaks.  It takes its name from a landslide which occurred many years ago down its steep northern side, or down the neck of the grazing steed.  The mane of spruce and balsam fir was stripped away for many hundred feet, leaving a long gray streak visible from afar.