ht. A rabbit stirs in his form; a partridge shakes on
his branch; the mink stops hunting frogs at the brook; the skunk takes
his nose out of the hole where he is eating sarsaparilla roots. A leaf
stirs, a toe scrapes, and instantly Kookooskoos is there. His fierce
eyes glare in; his great claws drop; one grip, and it's all over. For
the very sight of him scares the little creatures so, that there is no
life left in them to cry out or to run away.

A nest which I found a few years ago shows how well this kind of
hunting succeeds. It was in a gloomy evergreen swamp, in a big tree,
some eighty feet from the ground. I found it by a pile of pellets of
hair and feathers at the foot of the tree; for the owl devours every
part of his game, and after digestion is complete, feathers, bones,
and hair are disgorged in small balls, like so many sparrow heads.
When I looked up, there at the top was a huge mass of sticks, which
had been added to year after year till it was nearly three feet
across, and half as thick. Kookooskoos was not there. He had heard me
coming and slipped away silently.

Wishing to be sure the nest was occupied before trying the hard climb,
I went away as far as I could see the nest and hid in a thicket.
Presently a very large owl came back and stood by the nest. Soon
after, a smaller bird, the male, glided up beside her. Then I came on
cautiously, watching to see what they would do.

At the first crack of a twig both birds started forward the male
slipped away; the female dropped below the nest, and stood behind a
limb, just her face peering through a crotch in my direction. Had I
not known she was there, I might have looked the tree over twenty
times without finding her. And there she stayed hidden till I was
halfway up the tree.

When I peered at last over the edge of the big nest, after a
desperately hard climb, there was a bundle of dark gray down in a
little hollow in the middle. It touched me at the time that the little
ones rested on a feather bed pulled from the mother bird's own breast.
I brushed the down with my fingers. Instantly two heads came up, fuzzy
gray heads, with black pointed beaks, and beautiful hazel eyes, and a
funny long pin-feather over each ear, which made them look like little
wise old clerks just waked up. When I touched them again they
staggered up and opened their mouths,--enormous mouths for such little
fellows; then, seeing that I was an intruder, they tried to bristle
their