A nest which I found a few years ago shows how well this kind of hunting succeeds.  It was in a gloomy evergreen swamp, in a big tree, some eighty feet from the ground.  I found it by a pile of pellets of hair and feathers at the foot of the tree; for the owl devours every part of his game, and after digestion is complete, feathers, bones, and hair are disgorged in small balls, like so many sparrow heads.  When I looked up, there at the top was a huge mass of sticks, which had been added to year after year till it was nearly three feet across, and half as thick.  Kookooskoos was not there.  He had heard me coming and slipped away silently.

Wishing to be sure the nest was occupied before trying the hard climb, I went away as far as I could see the nest and hid in a thicket.  Presently a very large owl came back and stood by the nest.  Soon after, a smaller bird, the male, glided up beside her.  Then I came on cautiously, watching to see what they would do.

At the first crack of a twig both birds started forward the male slipped away; the female dropped below the nest, and stood behind a limb, just her face peering through a crotch in my direction.  Had I not known she was there, I might have looked the tree over twenty times without finding her.  And there she stayed hidden till I was halfway up the tree.

When I peered at last over the edge of the big nest, after a desperately hard climb, there was a bundle of dark gray down in a little hollow in the middle.  It touched me at the time that the little ones rested on a feather bed pulled from the mother bird’s own breast.  I brushed the down with my fingers.  Instantly two heads came up, fuzzy gray heads, with black pointed beaks, and beautiful hazel eyes, and a funny long pin-feather over each ear, which made them look like little wise old clerks just waked up.  When I touched them again they staggered up and opened their mouths,—­enormous mouths for such little fellows; then, seeing that I was an intruder, they tried to bristle their few pin-feathers and snap their beaks.

They were fat as two aldermen; and no wonder.  Placed around the edge of the big nest were a red squirrel, a rat, a chicken, a few frogs’ legs, and a rabbit.  Fine fare that, at eighty feet from the ground.  Kookooskoos had had good hunting.  All the game was partly eaten, showing I had disturbed their dinner; and only the hinder parts were left, showing that owls like the head and brains best.  I left them undisturbed and came away; for I wanted to watch the young grow—­which they did marvelously, and were presently learning to hoot.  But I have been less merciful to the great owls ever since, thinking of the enormous destruction of game represented in raising two or three such young savages, year after year, in the same swamp.