tling, and squawking as loud as he could. He usually
managed to fly just over the head of each bird, and as he came like a
catapult, every one flew before him, so that in a minute the room was
full of birds flying madly about, trying to get out of his way. This
gave him great pleasure.

Once a grasshopper got into the Bird Room, probably brought in clinging
to some one's dress in the way grasshoppers do. Jakie was in his cage,
but he noticed the stranger instantly, and I opened the door for him.
He went at once to look at the grasshopper, and when it hopped he was
so startled that he hopped too. Then he picked the insect up, but he
did not know what to do with it, so he dropped it again. Again the
grasshopper jumped directly up, and again the jay did the same. This
they did over and over, till every one was tired laughing at them. It
looked as if they were trying to see who could jump the highest.

There was another bird in the room, however, who knew what grasshoppers
were good for. He was an orchard oriole, and after looking on awhile,
he came down and carried off the hopper to eat. The jay did not like
to lose his plaything; he ran after the thief, and stood on the floor
giving low cries and looking on while the oriole on a chair was eating
the dead grasshopper. When the oriole happened to drop it, Jakie,--who
had got a new idea what to do with grasshoppers,--snatched it up and
carried it under a chair and finished it.

I could tell many more stories about my bird, but I have told them
before in one of my "grown-up" books, so I will not repeat them here.

BABES IN THE WOODS

BY JOHN BURROUGHS

One day in early May, Ted and I made an expedition to the Shattega, a
still, dark, deep stream that loiters silently through the woods not far
from my cabin. As we paddled along, we were on the alert for any bit of
wild life of bird or beast that might turn up.

There were so many abandoned woodpecker chambers in the small dead
trees as we went along that I determined to secure the section of a tree
containing a good one to take home and put up for the bluebirds. "Why
don't the bluebirds occupy them here?" inquired Ted. "Oh," I replied,
"blue birds do not come so far into the woods as this. They prefer
nesting-places in the open, and near human habitations." After carefully
scrutinizing several of the trees, we at last saw one that seemed to
fill the bill. It was a small dead tree-trunk seven or eight inches in
di