Scot iaptex cinere a. 
Belmont , 
1898. 
liar oh 2. 
I 
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Mass . 
I drove to the Payson place this morning to make enquir- 
ies respecting the fine Great Gray Owl which Frazar sold me a 
week or so ago. Mr. Mai one told me that he shot it at about 
2 P.M. on February 22nd. During the whole forenoon the Crows 
had been making a great outcry behind his house and their 
numbers kept increasing until as he thinks upwards of 100 
birds were assembled. Their clamor fihally became so loud and 
incessant as to annoy him seriously and soon after dinner he 
took a Flobert rifle and went out to disperse them. Immedi- 
ately behind his house is a row of tall Norway spruces, behind 
this an old apple orchard and just beyond the orchard a dense 
growth of Norway spruces, larches and arbor vitaes encircling 
an open space in the middle of which are the stables and pad- 
dock of the fine old Cushing estate. A circular driveway 
passes under or through the trees which average 50 or GO feet 
in height. Between the driveway and the paddock, in the mid- 
dle of the thickest spruces, stands a white pine - a vigorous 
tree with a full, green top but with dead under branches. 
The Owl was perched on one of these dead branches about 25 ft. 
above the ground and some five feet below a fork in which 
there is an old Crow’s nest. 
As Malone approached the spruces he saw great numbers of 
Crows sitting on or flying over them and, picking out a bird 
that offered a good mark, he fired at it but missed. A few 
(•i 
