Presently the mother wren heard its calls and paid it a visit; but instead of feeding it, she seemed very anxious to drive it away, knowing, no doubt, that there were predaceous enemies in the neighborhood. In her attempts to drive it into hiding, she pecked it on the head and in the mouth. Then she dropped down into a thicket and secured a green worm, with which she flew up to the chirping waif's perch; but I could not make out that she fed the birdling, though she thrust the worm toward its open mouth. Soon after she had gone off the second time, the little bird clambered around the corner of the wall to the lower side of the house, where it rested a while on a narrow shelf. All this time my boy and I were watching it intently. Suddenly a blue jay came flying over from one of the trees of an adjacent yard, moving in a rapid, stealthy way. First it plunged into an apple tree at the corner of the house; then, before I could collect my wits enough to know what was happening, it darted over to the brick wall, seized the little wren with its bill, and bore it off. The mother wren followed, uttering a pitiful chatter, while the little victim called loudly for help. The blue kidnapper darted to a tree in my neighbor's yard, where he put his booty under his claw on a limb, holding it by one slender leg, while its body dangled below. Hoping still to rescue the little captive, I sprang over into the adjacent yard with a loud shout and much waving of my hands; but my vigorous efforts only caused the jay to pick up the wren in its bill and continue its flight, and neither wren nor jay was seen by me again. This incident furnishes unimpeachable testimony against the character of the blue-coated Robin Hood. There was no faltering or hesitancy in his conduct, but he seized and carried off his little victim as if he were to the manner born, and had become hardened by practice in depredations of the sort. A farmer once related the following incident to me: A pair of chipping sparrows had built a nest in a bush in his front yard. One day after the little ones had arrived, he heard a distressed chirping coming from the parent birds, and on going to the front yard, he caught a blue jay in the act of picking a callow bantling from the chippie's nest. Holding it in his bill, the jay flew across the field with his prize, and presently returned and bore off a second nestling. By this time the farmer's ire was aroused; he bolted into the house and secured his shotgun, and when the marauding jay came back on the third trip on robbery intent, the man brought him to the ground with a shot that ended his career.