art
was that when they got to teasing and tormenting Hooty and making the
great racket which he knew they would, Mrs. Hooty would lose her temper
and fly over to join Hooty in trying to drive away the black tormentors.
Then Blacky would slip over to the nest which she had left unguarded and
steal one and perhaps both of the eggs he knew were there.

When they reached the tree where Hooty was, he was blinking his great
yellow eyes and had fluffed out all his feathers, which is a way he has
when he is angry, to make himself look twice as big as he really is. Of
course, he had heard the noisy crew coming, and he knew well enough what
to expect. As soon as they saw him, they began to scream as loud as
ever they could and to call him all manner of names. The boldest of them
would dart at him as if to pull out a mouthful of feathers, but took
the greatest care not to get too near. You see, the way Hooty hissed and
snapped his great bill was very threatening, and they knew that if once
he got hold of one of them with those big cruel claws of his, that would
be the end.

So they were content to simply scold and scream at him and fly around
him, just out of reach, and make him generally uncomfortable, and they
were so busy doing this that no one noticed that Blacky was not joining
in the fun, and no one paid any attention to the old tumble-down nest
of Redtail the Hawk only a few trees distant. So far Blacky's plans were
working out just as he had hoped.

CHAPTER VI: Hooty The Owl Doesn't Stay Still

Now what's the good of being smart
When others do not do their part?

If Blacky the Crow didn't say this to himself, he thought it. He knew
that he had made a very cunning plan to get the eggs of Hooty the Owl,
a plan so shrewd and cunning that no one else in the Green Forest or on
the Green Meadows would have thought of it. There was only one weakness
in it, and that was that it depended for success on having Hooty the
Owl do as he usually did when tormented by a crowd of noisy Crows,--stay
where he was until they got tired and flew away.

Now Blacky sometimes makes a mistake that smart people are very apt to
make; he thinks that because he is so smart, other people are stupid.
That is where he proves that smart as he is, he isn't as smart as he
thinks he is. He always thought of Hooty the Owl as stupid. That is, he
always thought of him that way in daytime. At night, when he was waked
out of a sound sleep by the f