What was different about these two? They had
their young ones to protect. Yes, but so had
every bird in the great colony its young one, or its
egg, to protect, yet all the others had gone. Did
these two have more mother-love than the
others? And hence, more courage, more intelligence?
We took another step toward them, and one of
the two birds sprang into the air, knocking her
baby over and over with the stroke of her wing,
and coming within an inch of hurling it across the
rim to be battered on the ledges below. The other
bird raised her wings to follow, then clapped them
back over her baby. Fear is the most contagious
thing in the world; and that flap of fear by the
other bird thrilled her, too, but as she had
withstood the stampede of the colony, so she caught
herself again and held on.
She was now alone on the bare top of the rock,
with ten thousand circling birds screaming to her
in the air above, and with two men creeping up to
her with a big black camera that clicked ominously.
She let the multitude scream, and with
threatening beak watched the two men come on.
A motherless baby, spying her, ran down the rock
squealing for his life. She spread a wing, put her
bill behind him and shoved him quickly in out of
sight with her own baby. The man with the
camera saw the act, for I heard his machine click,
and I heard him say something under his breath
that you would hardly expect a mere man and a
game-warden to say.
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