would the doctors do if they didn't have criminals to study in order to form 

 new degeneracy theories? Why, the doctors would lose half the fun of their 

 profession. When you see a jay sneaking off through the trees with his bill 

 spiked through a stolen robin's egg, you know at once why everything that wears 

 feathers hates him. A Kentucky friend once told me of seeing a jay deliberately 

 lift four newly hatched mockingbirds out of the nest and drop them to the 

 ground, where they perished. I had tliought there must have been some mis- 

 take about this story, for while I knew the jay was fond of eggs, I hardly 

 thought he was hardened enough to commit murder. I am no longer in doubt. 

 I found in Rose Hill cemetery the nest of a wood pewee. It was a beautiful 

 little lichen-made saucer resting on the upper side of a broad horizontal limb of 

 an oak. I visited the nest a number of times and watched the father bird launch 

 out from the tree to snap up occasional insect trifles. He was a pugnacious little 

 fellow, and he kept all the birds of the neighborhood at a distance. A pair of 

 jays had a nest in an evergreen tree not far away, and knowing the jays' thiev- 

 ing proclivities, the wood pewees waged constant war against them. The appear- 

 ance of either one of the pair within twenty yards of the pewees' home was 

 the signal for an attack. The jay always fled. One day three little creatures 

 poked their way into the world through the eggshells in the oak tree nest. 

 There were enough insects near the oak tree, apparently, to supply the wants 

 of parents and children. It was seldom that either one of the pewees wandered 

 away from ]iome. I have never been able to explain why it was that on one 

 afternoon as I stood watching the birds, they both left the oak and flew to a 

 catalpa fully fifty yards away. No sooner had the little guardians left their 

 charge than one of the jays came like a flash from the evergreen, and before I 

 could realize what was being done, much less interfere, the three infant pewees 

 were lifted from the nest and dropped one by one to the gravel walk below. 

 The parent pewees soon came back, and their mourning is with me yet. 



In Graceland there is a little lake whose waters and the perfect peace of 

 the surroundings attract many of the wilder birds. One April morning I flushed 

 a woodcock from under the trees on the shore In the early spring mallards 

 not infrequently rest in the sedges near the little island with its drooping willows. 

 The grebes, that are hunted mercilessly throughout the entire year because 

 women covet their silver breasts for bonnet decoration, make this Graceland 

 pond a resting place for days together while on the weary journey nortlnvard. 

 No gun flashes through the bushes on the shore, and the harassed birds find 

 peace and food. Three of tlic grebes stayed on the waters of the pond for ten 

 days, and became so tame that they paid no atteiUion to the curious people who 

 watched their swimming and diving feats. .\ female blue-bill duck came into 

 the Graceland pond one morning and was so pleased with the situation that she 

 stayed for two weeks, r.efore the bhie-bill left it was possible to approach 

 within a few yards of her without causing her either to dive or to dart away. 



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