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When the fishermen arrived I was sitting among the rocks as usual, and turned to acknowledge the mother bird's Ch'wee? But my deep-laid scheme to find out their method accomplished nothing; except, perhaps, to spoil the day's lesson. They saw my bait on the instant. One of the youngsters dove headlong without poising, went under, missed his fish, rose, plunged again.
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.
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.
Then a pair of broad wings would sweep into sight, and they would stretch their wings wide and break into eager whistlings, Pip, pip, ch'wee? chip, ch'weeeeee? "did you get him? is he a big one, mother?" And they would stand tiptoeing gingerly about the edge of the great nest, stretching their necks eagerly for a first glimpse of the catch.
Opposite my camp on the lake, where I tarried long one summer, charmed by the beauty of the place and the good fishing, a pair of fishhawks had built their nest in the top of a great spruce on the mountain side. It was this pair of birds that came daily to circle over my canoe, or over the rocks where I fished for chub, to see how I fared, and to send back a cheery Ch'wee! chip, ch'weeee!
Then the second fawn burst out of the cover where she had hidden him, and darted along the ridge after her, jumping like a big red fox from rock to rock, rising like a hawk over the windfalls, hitting her tracks wherever he could, and keeping his little nose hard down to his one needful lesson of following the white flag. Whit, whit, ch'wee?
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