SHARP EYES 49 



"Look intently enough at anything," said a poet 

 to me one day, "and you will see something that 

 would otherwise escape you." I thought of the re- 

 mark as I sat on a stump in an opening of the woods 

 one spring day. I saw a small hawk approaching; 

 he flew to a tall tulip- tree, and alighted on a large 

 limb near the top. He eyed me and I eyed him. 

 Then the bird disclosed a trait that was new to me: 

 he hopped along the limb to a small cavity near the 

 trunk, when he thrust in his head and pulled out 

 some small object and fell to eating it. After he 

 had partaken of it for some minutes he put the re- 

 mainder back in his larder and flew away. I had 

 seen something like feathers eddying slowly down 

 as the hawk ate, and on approaching the spot found 

 the feathers of a sparrow here and there clinging to 

 the bushes beneath the tree. The hawk, then, — 

 commonly called the chicken hawk, — is as provident 

 as a mouse or squirrel, and lays by a store against a 

 time of need, but I should not have discovered the 

 fact had I not held my eye to him. 



An observer of the birds is attracted by any un- 

 usual sound or commotion among them. In May or 

 June when other birds are most vocal, the jay is a 

 silent bird; he goes sneaking about the orchards and 

 the groves as silent as a pickpocket ; he is robbing 

 birds'-nests, and he is very anxious that nothing 

 should be said about it, but in the fall none so quick 

 and loud to cry *' Thief, thief! " as he. One Decem- 

 ber morning a troop of them discovered a little 

 screech owl secreted in the hollow trunk of an old 



