Birds and Nature Vol. 11 No. 1 [January 1902]. Various

her right reversible toe.

      There came no sound of wings, but the branch on which she sat quivered beneath an added weight, and she rolled her round eyes affectionately toward the new comer, a great horned owl, with a welcoming gurgle, in which was a note of expectation. Her lover was a handsome fellow, with great tufts over his ears, and he had brought a “gift for his fair,” though it was not a dainty box of bonbons produced from his overcoat pocket. He lifts his broad wings, bends his head, and produces from his crop a newly caught frog. His mistress nestles close, with fluttering wings and upturned beak, and receives the great dainty with an evident pleasure which delights him. He tries again. This time the convulsive effort brings forth to light a field mouse, garnished with two grasshoppers and a black cricket, which his lady receives with the pretty infantile attitudes and flutterings which all ladies think so becoming and attractive. Then they snuggle up close together, as is the way of lovers, and sit so still they might have been mistaken for a pair of stuffed owls – indeed one of them was – save for the occasional turning round of the head in that mechanical way affected by owls, for they are watchful, as all wood creatures have need to be.

      “Why didst thou tarry so long, my brave?” she finally murmured, as she fondly toyed with the soft mottled feathers on his broad breast.

      He lifted his feathery horns angrily at the remembrance. “The blue terror caught sight of me as I looked forth from the beautiful dark home in the dead oak tree which I have selected for thee, my beloved. It was just as the gaudy daylight was giving way to the pleasing blackness of night that I came forth, thinking all the little day flyers would have been asleep, but a belated bluejay saw me and, with lifted crest and shrill voice, raised the hue and cry. The robin left his mud daubed nest in the orchard across the road, the titmouse from his home in the knot hole of the rail fence, the nuthatch, the butcher bird and hosts of others all came, with piercing scoldings, sharp pecks and fluttering wings. I might have gone back into the darkness of our new home and so saved myself further annoyance, but, light of the world,” as he rolled his eyes fondly toward her, “I wanted not the blue terror to know where thou wouldst lay thine eggs – he is an egg thief, himself, thou knowest – so I sailed away into the open, and, O, the clamor they raised. And see,” showing two or three broken feathers, “what the bold blue terror has done, the strong voiced and strong winged bluejay.”