lyo Ways of Wood Folk. 



blackbirds and robins, wliicli linger more or less all 

 winter. At home in the far north, the owls feed 

 largely upon hares and grouse ; here nothing comes 

 amiss, from a stray cat, roving too far from the house, 

 to stray mussels on the beach that have escaped the 

 sharp eyes of sea-gulls. 



Some of his hunting ways are most curious. One 

 winter day, in prowling along the beach, I approached 

 the spot where a day or two before I had been shoot- 

 ing whistlers (golden-eye ducks) over decoys. The 

 blind had been made by digging a hole in the 

 sand. In the bottom was an armful of dry seaweed, 

 to keep one's toes warm, and just behind the stand 

 was the stump of a ship's mainmast, the relic of some 

 old storm and shipwreck, cast up by the tide. 



A commotion of some kind was going on in the 

 blind as I drew near. Sand and bunches of seaweed 

 were hurled up at intervals to be swept aside by the 

 wind. Instantly I dropped out of sight into the dead 

 beach grass to watch and listen. Soon a white head 

 and neck bristled up from behind the old mast, every 

 feather standing straight out ferociously. The head 

 was perfectly silent a moment, listening ; then it 

 twisted completely round twice so as to look in every 

 direction. A moment later it had disappeared, and 

 the seaweed was flying again. 



There was a prize in the old blind evidently. But 



