THE O. & O. SEMI-ANNUAL. 4 
trials I got him to perch on my left hand, and with my gun in my 
right, I carried him as far as I could in this cramped _ position, he 
sitting quietly and apparently needing all his powers to. keep his 
balance. After a while I succeeded in persuading him to perch 
on my shoulder, and thus we finished the trip. He was placed 
in an empty barn and that was his home for the rest of his life. 
For several days he was fed by hand on fresh meat and birds 
cut up into small pieces, but he soon found a way of feeding him- 
self and would take an English Sparrow and bolt it whole, with- 
out removing a feather. With a bird the size of a Robin he would 
fly onto my hand, pick up the bird with one claw and fly back to 
his perch to discuss it. Then, standing on the unoccupied claw, 
he would raise the bird half-way to his mouth, bending his head 
to meet it, and proceed to pull out all the stiff wing and tail quills 
and partially pick the body. Still holding it in one claw he would 
tear pieces off until the remainder was small enough to pass his 
gullet, and then down it went, whole, and he called for more. 
His usual mode of salutation was by snapping his bill, and his 
method of signifying that ‘‘grub” would be acceptable was a com- 
bination of hissing and snapping. 
The amount of food that George could consume in a day was a 
caution. Here are some of his bills of fare: 1—Three Catbirds 
anda Purple Gallinule. 2—Three Catbirds, a Whip-poor-will, 
Blue Grosbeak and Red-wing Blackbird. 3—-The interior ar- 
rangements of three Gray Squirrels. 4—Five Cedar-birds. The 
birds mentioned were mostly (Catbirds excepted) specimens from 
which the skin had been removed, consisting of the whole body, 
with the exception of bones of legs, wings and skull. 
A comical looking fellow was George. As he sat on his perch, 
staring with his great, black eyes at an intruder, he had an inde- 
scribable air of wisdom, and looked something like a caricature 
of an English judge in his wig of office. When exercised about 
the appearance of any object, he would duck his head, move it 
up and down and sideways, as if connected with his body by a 
flexible cord instead of a neck, always with his intensely surprised 
gaze fixed on whatever had first excited his curiosity. 
He was curious and amusing, but, as he got grown, his demands 
for **erub” became so exorbitant that I began to see that it would 
not be possible to keep him much longer. He also got to be a 
