Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/82

 brook which flowed behind the farmyard. Here he dropped upon a momentarily unwary frog which was sitting, half-submerged, at the water's edge. He carried it to a near-by stump, and swallowed it whole. Then his ears caught a soft, sleepy twittering from among the branches of a straggling thorn bush some twenty or thirty yards downstream. A sudden ray from the moon, just rising over the hill, had awakened a sleeping song sparrow, and he had murmured some drowsy endearments to his mate who sat brooding her half-fledged nestlings close beside him. The next instant a monstrous, shadowy form with blazing eyes had burst in upon them. Both tiny parents were clutched simultaneously and squeezed to death before they had time to realize what doom had overtaken them. They were promptly gulped down, in quick succession; and then, sitting erect and solemn close beside the nest, the grim marauder proceeded to pick the half-naked nestlings from the nest one by one and to swallow them with deliberation. Though so small, they were the tastiest morsels he had sampled for a long time—since the nestful of partridge eggs, just beginning to hatch, which he had ravaged some weeks earlier in the season.

Up to this point, knowing that his greedy family was well supplied, the great owl had had no