ALLEN] THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE 175 



looking the ravine was his siui parlor. Here he basked and preened 

 himself and watched for his master and teams in the road, and 

 always calhd exhuberantly whenever he saw any one. 



We always brought Jimmie a tidbit of cereal or meat when we 

 went to feed the ducks and sometimes stayed a few minutes to 

 hunt spiders with him. Junmie htmts with real enjoyment and 

 when it comes to piercing the soft spherical body of a spider or 

 cracking the scaly exterior of a wireworm he is a true epicure. At 

 first all food was more or hss alike to him and he swallowed it 

 without tasting it apparently; but as hs grew older he became 

 partictdar to a nicety; he first manipulates the food with the tip 

 of his bill, tasting it dehcately, then deftly ttuns it over with his 

 tongue before swallowing it. If he likes it, it goes down the first 

 trip, but if he is doubtfvil about it or not hungry he only half 

 swallows it then brings it back and often disgustedly ejects it 

 entirely. As if not wishing to seem unappreciative, he often hides 

 it in a crack for future use. This is a common crow trick but I 

 have always thought that having hidden the food they forget about 

 it and never return to it tmless by accident. But this is not 

 Jimmie 's way; we have often watched him take food when he was 

 too surfeited to eat, hide it in the grass, then cover it with a dead 

 leaf, and a thin stone, and another stone. Days later he often 

 returns to such a cache, lifts up one stone, then the other stone, 

 then the dead leaf, and finally picks up the food. 



Raw meat or mice or sparrows seem to be the only things that 

 Jimmie never tires of. One day as I was comforting him for being 

 locked up, he stopped suddenly in his affectionate crooning and 

 pounced upon something behind an overturned bucket. When he 

 returned to the perch I saw that he had caught a mouse in his bill, 

 not using his claws as does a hawk. The next morning there was a 

 pellet beneath his roost containing the bones of a house mouse. 

 Ha\'ing learned the trick, Jimmie liked catching mice for himself in 

 his pen in the bam and even after he had his freedom again he 

 caught mice and shrews in the open. Shrews and small mice he 

 could swallow whole but field mice and sparrows he tore apart . He 

 is not exactly hawk-like in his manner of capturing prey but 

 reminds one more of a fussy old lady high stepping across a muddy 

 road as he nins, and jumps and flutters in pursuit. 



Jimmie grew very tired of his captivity and when the first warm 

 day of February came we let him out, intending to put him back in 



