ests were chickadees,
nut-hatches, tree sparrows, downy woodpeckers, juncos, with an
occasional fox sparrow or purple finch or flock of Canadian crossbills.
Our unwelcome guests were English sparrows, of whom, however, we had
but few and those of rather subdued deportment; blue jays, who would
fly away with big pieces of meat or cocoanut, and the gray squirrels,
who would come stealing softly down the edge of the casement and
suddenly leap into the box. Here they would sit up on their haunches,
defying us through the pane with hard, black eyes, and gobble till they
could gobble no more. Then they would stuff their elastic cheeks almost
to bursting and make off with their plunder only to be back again
before the little birds, so long and so patiently waiting on the snowy
branches of the nearest tree, had really settled down to enjoy the
leavings.

Sigurd instinctively understood that the little birds were guests--to
the English sparrows he gave the benefit of the doubt--and that the
blue jays and squirrels were intruders. On a keen winter day, when the
boxes had been freshly filled, he was indeed an overworked collie,
scampering from room to room and window to window, barking furiously at
the raiders. This vociferous warning that no trespassers were allowed
sufficed for the blue jays, who would flap sullenly away, but the
squirrels were quick to learn that a bark was not a bite. Shadowtail
would only drop his nut and sit up erect and alert, his little fists
pressed to his heart, his beady eyes staring straight against the dog's
honest, indignant gaze. Seeing that his loudest roar had lost its
terrors, Sigurd would leap up toward the window and give it a
resounding thump with his paw. At first this new menace put the
squirrels to precipitate retreat. Off they went, nor stood upon the
order of their going. A few minutes later, one shrewd little gray face
after another would peer around the casement edge, but at the first
view of that upright, shining figure, with the flowing snow-white ruff,
mounting guard on chair or hassock, the goblin faces vanished. Sigurd
was immensely proud of himself during this epoch of the warfare. A very
Casabianca in his firm conception of duty, only the most imperative
summons could call him from his post. But when the squirrels had
learned that the barrier between the collie and themselves was, though
transparent, an effective screen, and would, as before, saucily plant
themselves in the midd