11 The Kids Are Heard

me climbing up the bow to the nest, they'll think I'm a crew member." He looked down on the broody Frightful. "You and I have got to get these little birds in the sky. The rivers and valleys need them." He whistled softly. "Sleep well. I'll be back in the morning." IN WHICH The Kids Are Heard For fifteen days Frightful, with Sam's help, sat through the blasts of the jackhammers and the rumble of trucks. 426 bravely brought food to her at noon when the bridge was quiet, but he could not drive himself to take his turn brooding. But he did not abandon his family. He watched Frightful during the day from the big sycamore tree on the river-bank and at night from the top of the bridge.

Frightful slowly adjusted to the noise of the jackhammers. Sam was nearby. She listened to his soft whistles and words when the noise was the worst. 426 was too terrified to come to the nest and feed her, but he dropped food onto the girder. Sam took his place and fed it to her. Each day as she felt the chicks develop, Frightful heard less of the commotion. On day eighteen of incubation, Joe Cassini looked up and noticed sticks and reeds where the fifth vertical met the bow. "There's that nest everyone's so riled up about," he said to Dan Martin, a Mohawk Indian whose balance and fearlessness on high girders made him one of the most valuable bridge workers. "Looks perfectly fine to me." Dan studied the sticks. "Yeah," he said. "Messy bird." Then he thought a minute. "I never knew peregrine falcons made nests. They like bare ground." "I guess we learn something every day," said Joe Cassini. Dan Martin wasn't convinced. He kept an eye on the nest as he carried lumber to the men who were

building a form around the ravaged piling. As he worked, he wondered about a peregrine falcon and a stick nest. On day twenty the jackhammers stopped. The cement mixer drove onto the bridge, and blasts were replaced by grinding and tumbling sounds. Frightful barely heard them. She could feel the chicks move inside the eggs. The yolks had transformed into embryos, complete with tiny blood vessels, and they had grown heavier. This sent her deeper into the incubation trance. Even a dynamite blast on day twenty-two did not frighten her. With the jackhammers silent, 426 fed Frightful again and nervously sat down and brooded the eggs while she exercised. Sam watched, ready to help out if 426 became frightened again. One day when the tiercel was brooding the eggs and Frightful was looping and gliding, she heard Sam whistle from the mountain that rose above the river. The three-note call had a new ending, a "yippee" note that said, "All is well." Sam was in a lean-to he had constructed on the mountainside. It was eye level with Frightful's

aerie. Out from it he fished and gathered wild tubers and greens. After dinner he would lean back against the base of an old chestnut oak, put his hands under his head, and watch the aerie. Now and then he whistled to Frightful. On this evening Frightful answered his call with "car-reet," and he smiled and remembered how she had saved his life by catching food for him in the wilderness. "We'll get through this, too, old girl," he said. "Only nine days to go." When the sun set that night, Sam cut one more notch in a stick to keep track of the thirty-one days of incubation. He wondered why Leon Longbridge had not been successful in stopping the repairs. Leon wondered why the birds had not deserted. Relentlessly, the bridge work went on. Sam now went up the iron bowstring bridge to feed Frightful only if the equipment on the bridge indicated it was going to be another noisy day. 426 had not adjusted to that. On these days Sam climbed to Frightful before the kids came by on their way to school to check on the falcons. They would look, smile, and leave a little before the

school bell rang and the work crew arrived. In this interval Sam had time to climb down the bridge and disappear without being seen. One morning when Sam had finished feeding Frightful and was on his way down, Molly arrived. She saw him. Quickly he stepped to the horizontal girder and walked to the middle of the bridge, his orange vest catching the sunlight. He inspected the bolts in the web joints and made notes without pencil or paper. Then he turned and walked past the nest, grabbed the iron bow, and backed down to the bridge floor. With Molly still looking at him, he dropped over the bridge, grabbed the form around the piling, and climbed down to the river shore. He vanished in the cattails. That day, as Sam had anticipated, was an extremely noisy one. 426 stayed away, and Sam didn't get back to Frightful until after five. She was ravenously hungry. He fed her until her crop was full. Satisfied, she arose and turned the eggs. The next morning just after Sam arrived, Frightful heard the voice of her winter friend, Jon Wood. He was on the bridge with Leon Longbridge. The two

had been consulting about how to save the peregrines of the Delhi Bridge. "We aren't getting anywhere with the Department of Transportation," Jon said. "They won't stop the work for any reason at all. None." "That's what the Department of Wildlife Conservation is telling me, too," said Leon Longbridge. "My boss has been trying to stop them; but the order is— make these bridges safe. The Feds don't think it's a problem yet." "I had hoped the kids' letters would get some action," Jon said. "They got the utility company to fix several poles. Molly told me they've written the governor about the peregrines. He controls the Department of Transportation." "Yeah," said Leon Longbridge, "but they are only getting form letters back; 'thank you, but…' "He studied the aerie. "I think we ought to move the eggs," Jon finally said. "She's been incubating long enough to be so deeply attached to them that she'll follow them anywhere. We can put a box in that sycamore tree by the river and transfer the eggs to it. She ought to go right to them."