enient place under the shed to be pounded up for the hens. In
going out to the barn I often disturbed him making a meal off the bite
of meat that still adhered to them.

"Look intently enough at anything," said a poet to me one day, "and you
will see something that would otherwise escape you." I thought of the
remark as I sat on a stump in an opening of the woods one spring day. I
saw a small hawk approaching; he flew to a tall tulip-tree and alighted
on a large limb near the top. He eyed me and I eyed him. Then the bird
disclosed a trait that was new to me: he hopped along the limb to a
small cavity near the trunk, when he thrust in his head and pulled out
some small object and fell to eating it. After he had partaken of it for
some minutes he put the remainder back in his larder and flew away. I
had seen something like feathers eddying slowly down as the hawk ate,
and on approaching the spot found the feathers of a sparrow here and
there clinging to the bushes beneath the tree. The hawk then--commonly
called the chicken hawk--is as provident as a mouse or a squirrel, and
lays by a store against a time of need, but I should not have discovered
the fact had I not held my eye on him.

An observer of the birds is attracted by any unusual sound or commotion
among them. In May or June, when other birds are most vocal, the jay
is a silent bird; he goes sneaking about the orchards and the groves
as silent as a pickpocket; he is robbing bird's-nests and he is very
anxious that nothing should be said about it; but in the fall none so
quick and loud to cry "Thief, thief!" as he. One December morning a
troop of jays discovered a little screech-owl secreted in the hollow
trunk of an old apple-tree near my house. How they found the owl out is
a mystery, since it never ventures forth in the light of day; but
they did, and proclaimed the fact with great emphasis. I suspect the
bluebirds first told them, for these birds are constantly peeping into
holes and crannies, both spring and fall. Some unsuspecting bird had
probably entered the cavity prospecting for a place for next year's
nest, or else looking out a likely place to pass a cold night, and then
had rushed out with important news. A boy who should unwittingly venture
into a bear's den when Bruin was at home could not be more astonished
and alarmed than a bluebird would be on finding itself in the cavity of
a decayed tree with an owl. At any rate the bluebirds joined the jays
i