From Spring-time, all through the Summer until September, the male
and female were absorbed in the great, beautiful, indispensable task
of breeding their young. In September the fledgelings took wing.
The Spring and Summer developed in their multi-coloured glory: they
burned with fiery splendour; the pine-trees glowed with a resinous
phosphorescence. There was the fragrance of wormwood. Chicory, blue-
bells, buttercups, milfoil, and cowslip blossomed and faded; prickly
thistles abounded.
In May the nights were deeply blue.
In June they were pale green.
The dawn broke in a blood-red flare like a great conflagration, and
at night pale silvery mists moved along the bottom of the ravine,
washing the tops of the pines.
At first the nest contained five grey eggs with green speckles. Then
came the little birds, big-headed, with disproportionately large
yellow mouths, their bodies covered with down. They chirruped
plaintively, stretching their long necks out from the nest, and they
ate voraciously.
They flew in June, though as yet clumsily, piping, and awkwardly
fluttering their immature wings.
The female was with them all the time, ruffling her feathers,
solicitous and petulant.
The male had no power of thought and hardly any of feeling, but
within him was a sense of pride in his own work, which he carried on
with joy. His whole life was dominated with an instinct which
subjugated his will and his desires to the care of his young.
He hunted for prey.
He had to obtain a great deal, because both his fledglings and his
mate were voracious. He had to fly sometimes as far as the river
Kama, in order to catch seagulls, which hovered over the huge, white,
unfamiliar, many-eyed monsters that floated over the water, puffing,
and smelling strangely like forest fires--the steamers!
He fed his fledgelings himself, tearing the meat into pieces. And he
watched attentively how, with wide open beaks, they seized the little
lumps of meat and, rolling their eyes and almost choking in the
effort, swallowed them.
Sometimes one of the fledgelings awkwardly fell out of the nest and
rolled down the steep. Then he hastily and anxiously flew after it,
bustling and croaking as though he were grumbling; he would take it
cautiously and clumsily in his talons and carry it, a frightened
flustered atom, back to the nest. There he would smooth its feathers
with his great beak for a long time, strutting round it, standing
high on his legs, and continuing his anxious croaks.
He dared not sleep at nights.
He perched on the end of a root, vigilantly peering into the
darkness, guarding his nestlings and their mother from danger. The
stars were above him. At times, as though scenting the fullness and
beauty of life, he fiercely and ruefully uttered his croak--scaring
the night.