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,
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.
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.