Who blindly seeks will seldom find

The thing he has upon his mind.

If he does it will be by accident. It will be pure luck. Peter Rabbit should have known this. He had tried it often enough. But Peter is a heedless, happy-go-lucky fellow, and I guess he always will be. So when he made up his mind that he would like to see the nest of Ol’ Mistah and Mrs. Buzzard, he promptly started to look for it without having the least idea where to look or what to look for.

He thought he had an idea, but Peter always thinks he has an idea. The trouble is he never thinks enough to know whether or not he has an idea. If Ol’ Mistah Buzzard had a nest, of course it must be in the Green Forest, reasoned Peter. And because all the big birds of his acquaintance built big nests high up in the trees, of course Ol’ Mistah Buzzard must do the same thing. That was as far as Peter went in his thinking.

“All I need to do is to keep my eyes wide open for a new big nest in a tall tree, and that ought to be easy enough to find,” thought Peter, as he scampered into the Green Forest, lipperty-lipperty-lip.

Once in the Green Forest he no longer hurried. It is hard work to hurry with your head tipped back so as to see the tops of the trees. Presently Peter’s neck began to ache. He sat down under a friendly little hemlock-tree to rest his aching neck. When it felt better he went on again, his head tipped back as before. Whenever he saw a bundle of sticks or leaves high up in a tree he was sure that he had found Ol’ Mistah Buzzard’s nest. Then he would sit down and stare at it very hard and presently would discover that it was an old nest of Redtail the Hawk or of Blacky the Crow or of Chatterer the Red Squirrel or his cousin, Happy Jack the Gray Squirrel. Then he would work his head back and forth to get the kink out of his neck, sigh, and start on again.

“My goodness! I didn’t suppose there were so many old nests in the Green Forest,” muttered Peter as for the twentieth time he was disappointed. “And what an everlasting lot of trees! Why the Green Forest is all trees!”

Then Peter looked all around to see if anybody had overheard that foolish remark. Nobody had, and Peter grinned at his own foolishness. He rubbed his neck and started on, head tipped back as before. At last he could stand it no longer.

“I’ve got to give it up for now, anyway,” said he ruefully. “My neck aches so that I can’t stand it any longer.” Of course he meant the ache, not his neck. “I want awfully to find that nest of Ol’ Mistah Buzzard’s, but I guess I’ll have to wait until another day. I didn’t realize that the Green Forest is so big. Why at this rate it will take me all the rest of the summer and more too to look in every tree. If I only had some idea just what part of the Green Forest to look in, it would help some.”

Right then and there a sudden idea popped into his funny little head, and he grinned sheepishly. “Why didn’t I think of it before?” he said right out loud. “I’ll just watch Ol’ Mistah Buzzard and see where he goes when he comes down from up in the blue, blue sky. He’ll be sure to come down near his nest, and then all I’ll have to do is to go right over there and find it. My gracious, goodness me, but my neck certainly does ache! I think I’ll rest a bit and try my new plan later.”

And Peter did this very thing.