The first sign of it came when a flock of wild geese went honking southward overhead.  The young ones had never before seen such long-necked hawks, and were afraid of them.  But seeing that their mother had no fear, they took courage, and watched them with intense interest.  Was it the wild, clanging cry that moved them, or was it solely the inner prompting then come to the surface?  A strange longing to follow took possession of each of the young ones.  They watched those arrowy trumpeters fading away to the south, and sought out higher perches to watch them farther yet, and from that time things were no more the same.  The November moon was waxing, and when it was full, the November madness came.

The least vigorous of the flock were most affected.  The little family was scattered.  Redruff himself flew on several long erratic night journeys.  The impulse took him southward, out there lay the boundless stretch of Lake Ontario, so he turned again, and the waning of the Mad Moon found him once more in the Mud Creek Glen, but absolutely alone.

V

Food grew scarce as winter wore on.  Redruff clung to the old ravine and the piney sides of Taylor’s Hill, but every month brought its food and its foes.  The Mad Moon brought madness, solitude, and grapes; the Snow Moon came with rosehips; and the Stormy Moon brought browse of birch and silver storms that sheathed the woods in ice, and made it hard to keep one’s perch while pulling off the frozen buds.  Redruff’s beak grew terribly worn with the work, so that even when closed there was still an opening through behind the hook.  But nature had prepared him for the slippery footing; his toes, so slim and trim in September, had sprouted rows of sharp, horny points, and these grew with the growing cold, till the first snow had found him fully equipped with snowshoes and ice-creepers.  The cold weather had driven away most of the hawks and owls, and made it impossible for his four-footed enemies to approach unseen, so that things were nearly balanced.

His flight in search of food had daily led him farther on, till he had discovered and explored the Rosedale Creek, with its banks of silver-birch, and Castle Frank, with its grapes and rowan berries, as well as Chester woods, where amelanchier and Virginia-creeper swung their fruit-bunches, and checkerberries glowed beneath the snow.

He soon found out that for some strange reason men with guns did not go within the high fence of Castle-Frank.  So among these scenes he lived his life, learning new places, new foods, and grew wiser and more beautiful every day.