When they reached the tree where Hooty was, he was blinking his great yellow eyes and had fluffed out all his feathers, which is a way he has when he is angry, to make himself look twice as big as he really is.  Of course, he had heard the noisy crew coming, and he knew well enough what to expect.  As soon as they saw him, they began to scream as loud as ever they could and to call him all manner of names.  The boldest of them would dart at him as if to pull out a mouthful of feathers, but took the greatest care not to get too near.  You see, the way Hooty hissed and snapped his great bill was very threatening, and they knew that if once he got hold of one of them with those big cruel claws of his, that would be the end.

So they were content to simply scold and scream at him and fly around him, just out of reach, and make him generally uncomfortable, and they were so busy doing this that no one noticed that Blacky was not joining in the fun, and no one paid any attention to the old tumble-down nest of Redtail the Hawk only a few trees distant.  So far Blacky’s plans were working out just as he had hoped.

CHAPTER VI:  Hooty The Owl Doesn’t Stay Still

   Now what’s the good of being smart
   When others do not do their part?

If Blacky the Crow didn’t say this to himself, he thought it.  He knew that he had made a very cunning plan to get the eggs of Hooty the Owl, a plan so shrewd and cunning that no one else in the Green Forest or on the Green Meadows would have thought of it.  There was only one weakness in it, and that was that it depended for success on having Hooty the Owl do as he usually did when tormented by a crowd of noisy Crows, —­ stay where he was until they got tired and flew away.

Now Blacky sometimes makes a mistake that smart people are very apt to make; he thinks that because he is so smart, other people are stupid.  That is where he proves that smart as he is, he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.  He always thought of Hooty the Owl as stupid.  That is, he always thought of him that way in daytime.  At night, when he was waked out of a sound sleep by the fierce hunting cry of Hooty, he wasn’t so sure about Hooty being stupid, and he always took care to sit perfectly still in the darkness, lest Hooty’s great ears should hear him and

Hooty’s great eyes, made for seeing in the dark, should find him.  No, in the night Blacky was not at all sure that Hooty was stupid.

But in the daytime he was sure.  You see, he quite forgot the fact that the brightness of day is to Hooty what the blackness of night is to him.  So, because Hooty would simply sit still and hiss and snap his bill, instead of trying to catch his tormentors or flying away, Blacky called him stupid.  He felt sure that Hooty would stay right where he was now, and he hoped that Mrs. Hooty would lose her temper and leave the nest where she was sitting on those two eggs and join Hooty to help him try to drive away that noisy crew.