CHOCORUA. 219 



at the disappearance of their focus. I think it 

 possible that one or both birds had been hatched 

 in this poplar, and had in turn reared families 

 in it, for it contained an old hole below the new 

 one. 



On my way home I crossed the fresh tracks 

 of a deer, its sharp hoof prints having been made 

 since the heavy rains of the forenoon. 



Neariug the barn, I was greeted by the whin- 

 ing squeals of a newly captured baby barred 

 owl. It had been found in the same hollow in 

 a giant beech from which my two favorite pets 

 were taken June 1, 1888. When first seen, 

 about May 10, it was too small to be carried 

 away. Even on May 17, the day on which its 

 capture was completed, it was only a double 

 handful of soft gray down and stomach, accent- 

 uated by claws, hooked beak and a squealing 

 voice. By May 30 it had grown into the like- 

 ness of an owl. Its stiffs wing and tail feathers 

 had begun to grow long, and much of its plum- 

 age to assume the distinctive markings of the 

 family. Its head and breast were still downy, 

 and its eyes, feeble in sight, looked milky and 

 bluish. In answer to its clamor, I gave it 

 a handful of angleworms, and a bullfrog neatly 

 jointed. Tucked up for the night in a cloth 

 and warmed by my hand, it made a series of 

 chuckles amusingly similar in character to the 

 contented peepings of a brood of chickens. 



