14 Gbe Warbler 



difficulty in picking up every unsoaked kernel and leaving the others. 

 You may draw your own moral, but I am satisfied that the Crow will not 

 eat food saturated with alcohol. He is either too uncivilized or too intelligent! 

 Orioles and other birds sometimes give us much annoyance by eating 

 the green peas from our garden, and except in the case of English Sparrows 

 we do not like to shoot them. I once killed a Hawk and roughly stuffed it 

 with straw, putting it on a pole near my pea vines, where the birds collect- 

 ed in quantities to scold and peck at it ; but they were afraid to touch the 

 peas, and finally left mine for those of my neighbor across the street 



acadian owl. (Nyctala acadia.) 



The Acadian Owl is a pretty, cunning-looking little bird, not much 

 larger than a Robin. He is the smallest of our Eastern Owls, and quite 

 tame, and is not often seen around my home. Some two years ago, while 

 hunting with my brother, we saw one of these little birds on the limb of a 

 tree not far from the ground, and we concluded to try to snare him. We 

 cut a long pole and made a slip noose with a shoe string, and while my 

 brother kept the Owl's attention by standing in front of him, I slipped the 

 noose over his head from behind. When we had the Owl we wanted to tie 

 him, and since we could not spare the shoe string for that purpose, my brother 

 decided to tie him with his watch chain. He snapped the catch around one 

 leg, and while trying to fasten the other leg the Owl made a flutter and got 

 loose, and the last we saw of him, he was sailing over the tops of the trees 

 with the watch chain hanging to his leg. My brother made a remark that 

 I have failed to notice in the Sunday school books, and I laughed. 



I have always taken an interest in birds because I have loved them, but 

 it does not follow that I know much about them. Some one said that the 

 more we know men the less we love them, but that man was an old cynic 

 and doubtless told an untruth. Certain it is that the more we know our na- 

 tive birds the more we love them, and it is one of the encouraging signs of 

 the day that it has become fashionable for young people to take an increas- 

 ing interest in the birds and wild flowers of their own country, and a young 

 person would hardly be considered accomplished to-day who is entirely ig- 

 norant of at least the common names of the flowers that bloom in our fields 

 and woods, and the birds that pour out their ecstatic music from our trees 

 and hedges. 



Travelers tell us the maidens of India light tiny candles and put them 

 on little chips and set them afloat upon the river Ganges to carry messages 

 of love to their dear ones far away ; and the songs of the birds come to us so 

 sweet and pure that they seem to bring messages of love to us from our 

 loved ones far away. 



