GENERAL JIM 157 
The coming of his first spring was a great event 
in Jim’s life. First of all, of course, it meant 
more food for less trouble. But it meant, too, 
the return of other birds—friendly crows, hostile 
hawks, and the hosts of song birds which were 
neither friend nor foe, but which would presently 
lay eggs and hatch broods that could be robbed 
for juicy meat. Night after night, from his roost 
in the tall pine up on the mountainside, Jim 
would wake and hear overhead the noises of 
northward moving birds—the honk of geese far 
aloft, the wing rustle, sometimes, of crows flying 
low, the division leaders cawing commands, the 
cheeps and twitters of the lesser folk of the air. 
Going across the meadows long before the leaves 
were out, he heard one morning the merry, sweet 
note of the redwings. Later he saw the bobo- 
links over the fields, and heard them gurgling 
their lovely song while on the wing. Farmers 
appeared with plows and from his aery pathways 
he could look all around and pick out the squares 
of brown loam, where the plow had been, each 
square a potential feeding ground, full of white 
grubs turned up by the plowshare. 
