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Birds and All Nature, Vol. V, No 2 February 1899

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<h2>OWLS.</h2> JOHN WINTHROP SCOTT. <div> <ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_b.jpg" width-obs="56" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div> BIRDS that fly in the night and whose wings move so smoothly through the air that they make no noise act much like the burglar that gets into your house quietly when you are asleep to steal your money. But the owl is not a burglar. He is the friend of man. There is no other bird that does the farmer so much good as the owl. The owl comes out in the dark to get the small animals that are out at that time stealing things from the farmer. So we may call the owl the night watchman of the farm. He sometimes comes out in the daytime, but most owls prefer the night or at least a dark day. The owl has been called a wise bird for the same reason that some men are thought to be wise—he looks wise. One reason he looks so steadily at you that you think he is studying you is because the light is so strong in the daytime that his sight is bad. But the owl is not as wise as he is said to be. He does some foolish things as well as other birds. In fact he is sometimes more foolish than any other bird would be in the same place. One owl was known to sit for more than a half day under a leaking water tap. The water fell at the rate of twenty drops a minute right down upon the owl's head, and yet he was not wise enough to move out of the wet. All owls are not too stupid to learn. Puffy, a tame young owl, caught and ate a two-pound pullet. An old hen afterwards took a fancy to his perch. She went in and gave the little owl a sound whipping, and after that shared the perch with him. He never forgot the lesson the hen had given him and always treated her well. Owls have a way of hiding from notice by making believe they are something besides owls. They can move their feathers so as to change their looks entirely. The great horned owl sometimes makes himself a frightful mass of feathers a yard wide, and at other times he seems to be a very slim bird, too thin for an owl. Puffy once got away from his master. He flew to the top of a stump and sat like a stake for an hour while his master looked all round the place for him without knowing there was a bird on the stump in plain sight. Owls draw the feathers away from their mouths in an odd way when they eat, and when walking softly to steal upon a mouse tuck up their feathers as a lady lifts her skirts. Owls are fond of mice. A boy who had a half-grown barn owl tried him one day to see how many mice he would eat. The first four mice went down the owl's throat very quickly. Then number five and number six were eaten in a short time. Number seven did not go down quite as rapidly and number eight was slower still. Number nine was taken greedily, but the owl could not swallow it. The tail hung out of the owl's mouth for awhile before it could be fairly counted. Then no more were eaten till about three hours after, when the owl was pleased to take four more mice. The gopher is a small animal that does damage to growing things. It digs up corn after it is planted, and it gnaws the roots of fruit trees so as to hurt them badly. Owls catch gophers and eat them. This is one reason why the farmer likes the owl so well. Barn owls sometimes roost with pigeons, but they are good friends. We know they do not eat the pigeons because owls swallow their food whole and have to throw up the bones afterwards, and it is known that the owls living with the pigeons throw up bones of rats and mice but not of pigeons. Sometimes so many mice have come upon the farms in England that it looked as if everything would be eaten up by them. But a great many owls always came when the mice were so thick and helped the farmers save their crops. One owl was seen to make, in thirty minutes, [Pg 79] seventeen trips to her young with food. A gentleman living in the West when there was so much damage done by grasshoppers found that the owls were living on them and not eating much of any other kind of food. The only way he could tell what the owls had for supper was to shoot an owl once in awhile and see what was in its stomach. One barn owl had thirty-nine locusts, twenty-two other insects, and one mouse which it had just taken. Screech owls and burrowing owls usually had more than two dozen locusts, and some of them had other kinds of insects. A rabbit, a weasel, a mink, or even a skunk is good eating for the owl. And there are times when one owl will make a meal of another owl of smaller size. A large red-tailed hawk was once put into a garret where there was a snowy owl. That night the hawk was killed and partly eaten by the owl. A tame great horned owl and a little screech owl were shut up in a hay loft together. The wings of the big owl were cut so he could not fly. After about a week they both became one owl, and that owl threw up the claws, beak, bones, and feathers which had once been useful to the little screech owl. Owls sometimes catch partridges and quails. This is not so bad, for they pick out the weak birds that are not well, and so keep disease from spreading among the fine birds. A hunter once shot a bob white so that it was not killed but could not fly. He and his dog were chasing the bird in the grass along a fence hoping to catch it. An owl saw the wounded bird and thought it belonged to him because it was not well. He came out of the woods very swiftly and picked up the bob white right before the eyes of the hunter. In woods where there are panthers one will often hear in the night fearful cries that make it seem as if some wild beast were about to jump down from some tree near by to kill the one who is out so late. Most of these cries which frighten people so are made by hoot owls. But it is not easy to tell whether the sound comes from a hoot owl or from the throat of a wild cat. There is a saying among country people who wish to seem wise: "I wasn't brought up in the woods to be afraid of owls." The hoot owl has so many wild notes in his voice that it is not at all strange that he scares people who have not been brought up in the woods. Before he sends out his proper hoot he sometimes seems to try to frighten everybody out of the forest with his awful shrieks. Sometimes several hoot owls get together in the night to hold a concert. One of them seems to tell a funny story and all the rest break out with shouts of he-he-he-he-hi-hi-hi-hi-ha-ha-ha-ha, and then they become as solemn as any other owls, and the stillness of the night is perfect until another owl has a droll story or song to set the rest a-shouting at. The owl is brave. One that weighed less than six ounces once fought a nine-pound rooster. A teamster in Maine once went to sleep on top of his load while his horses ate their oats beside a forest road. When he pulled the blanket away from his face an owl pounced down upon it, perhaps thinking his white skin was a rabbit, and tore his cheeks fiercely. He was much frightened, having just awakened. But he caught the owl and killed it after a short struggle, and called himself lucky because his eyes were not put out by the bird. If the owl is a sober and wise bird he forgets all about it when he woos his mate. Such awkward dancing and foolish boo-hoo-ing is never seen except when the owl is trying to choose a mate for life. But he makes up for his awkwardness when there are eggs to sit upon, for the owl is the best husband a bird ever had. When there is room in the old hollow where the nest is he will sit on the eggs with his wife and help her hatch the puffy little owl children. Owls are the best of parents, too, for they will risk their own lives freely to protect their young. If their nests are robbed and the old birds can find where their young ones are caged they will come daily with food for them though they are in great danger in doing so. [Pg 80] They lay their eggs earlier than other birds, and often the falling snow covers the back of the sitting bird. The warmth of her body melts it so that water runs gently down through the nest and forms icicles that hang below and glisten in the sunshine to tell of the faithful conduct of the mother owl. Small birds, as a rule, hate owls, and they delight in getting round these great awkward fellows whenever they can catch them by day and doing all they can to hurt their feelings. Bird-catchers sometimes catch small birds because they are so fond of teasing owls. An owl is caught and tied to a tree. The tree is covered with sticky stuff called bird lime. As soon as a little bird sees the owl in the tree he cries to his friends and they come in great crowds to tease the owl. But the small birds find their desire to torment ends in their own capture, for they cannot get away from the bird lime until the trapper comes along and gathers all the little birds that are hanging to the sticky limbs and twigs about the big bird they were trying to tease. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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