“And I would have taken his head along with it, at least as far as that black necklace of which he is so proud, if he had but given me the chance,” laughed the owl grimly. “It’s my usual way, only there were so many of the light, active little things that when I turned toward one another would come at me from the other side, so that my only safety from annoyance—for that was all they could do—was in my swift and silent wings. “It seemed,” he went on, his great eyes blazing at the recollection, “as if all the birds in the woods joined the mob, friend and foe flying wing to wing, the most innocent seed bird and the bloodiest thief fighting side by side, and I had to buffet them with wing and claw, though they kept beyond reach of my beak,” he added proudly, and he passed his great feather-clad claw caressingly down his polished black beak, curved like a scimitar, and as strong and sharp. “Thou knowest, my beautiful one,” he continued, “how the bluejay and the woodpecker fight one another, but tonight they joined forces as if they had been friends from the dawning of creation; and when the butcher bird cried out, ‘He ate three of my children yesterday,’ the titmouse—forgetting the thorn on which that same butcher bird impaled her first husband in the early summer—replied in fullest sympathy, ‘And he stole one of my lovely eggs only a week ago,’ and then she screamed with all her tiny might and flew at my head as boldly as if she had been an eagle. The little pests!” “Never mind, my hero,” murmured the lady owl as fondly as a coo dove, “a man has his mosquitoes, a dog has his fleas, there is a horsefly for the horse, and these little birds are our mosquitoes, our fleas and our flies. Who-who-who,” she stammered in her rhetorical flight; “who has not his troubles in this world?” “Who-who-who,” echoed the owl. S. E. McKee. TO A NUTHATCH. Shrewd little hunter of woods all gray, Whom I meet on my walk of a winter day, You’re busy inspecting each cranny and hole In the ragged bark of yon hickory hole; You intent on your task, and I on the law Of your wonderful head and gymnastic claw! The woodpecker well may despair of this feat— Only the fly with you can compete! So much is clear; but I fain would know How you can so reckless and fearless go, Head upward, head downward, all one to you, Zenith and nadir the same to your view? —Edith Thomas. THE BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH. (_Sitta pusilla._) Come, busy nuthatch, with your awl, But never mind your notes, Unless you’ve dropped your nasal chords And tuned your husky throats. —Ella Gilbert Ives, “Robin’s Thanksgiving Proclamation.”