A Screech Owl once set out to find
A comely mate of his own kind;
Through wooded haunts and shadows dense
He pressed his search with diligence;
As a reward
He soon espied
A feathered figure,
Golden-eyed.
“Good-night! my lady owl,” said he;
“Will you accept my company?”
He bowed and snapped, and hopped about,
He wildly screamed, then looked devout.
But no word came,
His heart to cheer,
From lady owl,
That perched so near.
The suitor thought her hearing dull,
And for her felt quite sorrowful.
Again by frantic efforts he
Did try to woo her from her tree;
“Pray, loveliest owl,
The forest’s pride,
Descend and be
My beauteous bride.
“A wedding feast of mice we’ll keep,
When cats and gunners are asleep;
We’ll sail like shadows cast at noon,
Each night will be a honeymoon.”
To this she answered
Not one breath;
But sat unmoved
And still as death.
Said he, “I guess that she’s the kind
That people in museums find;
Some taxidermist by his skill
Has stuffed the bird, she sits so still.
Ah me! that eyes
Once made to see
Should naught
But ghostly spectres be.”
At this she dropped her haughty head
And cried, “I’m neither stuffed nor dead.
Oh! weird and melancholy owl,
Thou rival of the wolf’s dread howl,
Since fate so planned,
I’ll not decline
To be for life
Your valentine.”
—Florence A. Van Sant, in _Bird-Lore_.
“Are any of these other Owls here useful?” asked Sarah, who had been
looking at the birds in the glass case while Gray Lady talked. “This
great big one with feather horns looks as if he could eat a little lamb
or a big rooster if he tried.”
“That is the Great Horned Owl,” said Gray Lady, “and fortunately he is
very uncommon here in New England, for he is a cruel and wasteful bird,
unsociable and sulky, killing chickens, and even turkeys and geese, and
often merely eating the head of its victim and then killing again; it is
the worst of all the birds of prey, and no excuse can be found for its
behaviour.
“The Barred Owl on the shelf beside the Great Horned, though having a
smooth head, is sometimes mistaken for the fierce Owl and shot for its
sins. Aside from sometimes killing birds, it is a useful Owl, eating
mice, rabbits, red squirrels, etc. This is a remote, lonely sort of an
Owl, with a dismal hoot, as one man described it:
‘Hoo-ooo-ooo-ho-ho-ho-too-too-to-to!’ sometimes interspersed by a laugh
and then a wail. I disturbed a young bird once, causing one of its
parents great uneasiness. It is impossible to describe all the notes
uttered by it at this time; they were rendered in a subdued muttering
and complaining strain, parts of which sounded exactly like ‘old-fool,
old-fool, don’t do it, don’t do it!’
“There are two other owls that are very useful; one is found all through
the United States, and the other is a more southern species, found
usually south of New England. The first is the Short-eared or Marsh Owl,
and the other is the Barn Owl.
“All Owls, in a way, look very much alike, in spite of difference in
colour and size. They have round, feathered heads, which they are
obliged to turn around when they wish to look, as their eyes are so
fixed in their sockets that they cannot roll them as other birds and
animals do; some have feather horns and some do not. They all have
talons, either covered by scales or feathers, with which they seize
their food, which they swallow whole. But between the Barn Owl and his
kin, the Horned, Hoot, and Screech Owls, there is a striking contrast.
[Illustration: BARN OWL]
“Look at those two in the case; they have round faces and circles of
feathers about the eyes. The Barn Owl has a heart-shaped face-disk,
about which the head-feathers cluster, making the bird look like a funny
old lady in a cap. This is the Owl that is usually described in
poetry—the Church Tower Owl, the Monkey-faced Owl, etc.
“While you look at this bird listen to some of the things that the Wise
Men say of it.
“The Barn Owl, strictly speaking, makes no nest. If occupying a natural
cavity of a tree, the eggs are placed on the rubbish that may have
accumulated at the bottom; if in a bank, they are laid on the bare
ground and among the pellets of fur and small bones ejected by the
parents. Frequently, quite a lot of such material is found in their
burrows, the eggs lying on, and among, the refuse. Incubation usually
commences with the first egg laid, and lasts about three weeks. The eggs
are almost invariably found in different stages of development, and
downy young may be found in the same nest with fresh eggs. Both sexes
assist in incubation. One of the best methods of studying the food
habits of Owls is to gather the pellets which they disgorge. These
consist of the undigested refuse of their food, hair, bones, feathers,
etc. Sometimes enormous quantities of this refuse are found in the
nesting-place of the Barn Owl, one recorded instance being two or three
cubic feet. When the tired farmer is buried deep in slumber, and nature
is repairing the waste of wearied muscles, this night-flying bird
commences its beneficial work, which ceases only at the rising of the
sun. All that has been written regarding the food of the Barn Owl shows
it to be of inestimable value to agriculture. Major Bendire says:
‘Looked at from an economic standpoint, it would be difficult to point
out a more useful bird than this Owl, and it deserves the fullest
protection; but, as is too often the case, man, who should be its best
friend, is generally the worst enemy it has to contend with, and it is
ruthlessly destroyed by him, partly on account of its odd appearance and
finely coloured plumage, but oftener from the erroneous belief that it
destroys the farmer’s poultry.’
“In the West, the food of the Barn Owl consists very largely of pouched
gophers, a specially destructive mammal, also ground-squirrels, rabbits,
and insects. In the southern states large numbers of cotton rats are
destroyed, a fact which should be appreciated by every planter.
“So you see, children, that those farmers who live within the range of
the Barn Owl can not only safely let it nest under their roofs, but give
the barn mice into its keeping, for it will do more good and less harm
than the usual prowling cat.
“The Short-eared Owl is unlike his brethren in that his nest, lined with
a few feathers or grass, is in a hollow in the ground or in a bunch of
tall weeds or grasses. He is also what is called a cosmopolitan Owl,
which means that he is equally at home in all parts of the country, and,
during the migrations and in the winter, these Owls sometimes live in
flocks of one hundred or more, which, considering the usual solitary
habits of Owls, is something to remember particularly.
[Illustration: SHORT-EARED OWL]
“As its nest is in moist, grassy meadows, so also does it spend much of
its time in the open, shunning the deep woods beloved of other Owls,
while it flies freely by day, except in the brightest weather. On cloudy
days it flies low over the meadows, in which it searches carefully for
its food. On the wing, it is easy and graceful, its flight being more
like that of a Hawk than the heavy swoop of the Owl. Its wings are long
in proportion to its body, which makes it appear very large when in
flight.
“The Short-eared Owls delight in carrying their food to a hayrick or
some such object, where they eat it at leisure. This same food of the
Short-eared Owl, in itself, is a letter of recommendation,—for it
consists of meadow-mice, gophers, and shrews (that are such a nuisance
in the West), grasshoppers, insects, and occasionally a bird,—so that,
like the Barn Owl and the Long-eared or Cat Owl, his brother, this bird
deserves full protection.
“Another cause has done many an owl to death,—not his ‘fatal gift of
beauty,’ that has made so many birds become bonnet martyrs, but the fact
that the Owl looks so wise that he was supposed to be the favourite bird
of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. For this reason, people like to have
stuffed Owls in their libraries to sit and look wise on a bookcase top.
“Thus many of the birds that have escaped the farmers have been shot by
collectors for the taxidermists or bird-store folk. Now the Wise Men are
making laws which will, we hope, protect the useful birds of prey from
this fate as they do the beautiful songsters; but it is not enough to
make laws, it is the business of each one of us to see that they are
carried out.
“I have a very amusing poem about an Owl in my scrap-book. When you have
read it, you may guess, if you can, to which Owl the author refers.”