WAYS OF THE OWL. 31 5 



floor, and Scops is himself again in a twinkling. The ears are low- 

 ered, the bright eyes open wide with a wicked glare, and the soft 

 wings take the crafty and cruel little bird swiftly down upon the 

 mouse. This habit of shamming unconsciousness appeared to be 

 characteristic of the long-eared owl which was mine for a few 

 brief hours in October, 1891. I handled him freely, but the closed 

 eyes and rigid muscles did not move. I went away and watched 

 him from a distance, and he was alert and making full use of his 

 beautiful eyes. 



Early in the summer of 1890 a friend sent me three young 

 screech-owls. They were as odd little gray hobgoblins as could 

 be imagined. Their temper, their voices, their appetites all 

 needed superlatives to describe them. They were sent to the White 

 Mountains for the summer, and lived in a slatted box under the 

 barred owls' big cage. They loved mice, birds, and fish, but did 

 not take quite as kindly to raw liver as the barred owls did. For 

 a week or more two of them were taken away from the third, and 

 when they came back they no longer knew him as a brother. His 

 life was made a burden to him, and one morning in August I 

 found his body lying on the floor of their cage. They had re- 

 moved nearly all his feathers and would probably have devoured 

 him if I had not deprived them of the fruits of their unnatural 

 crime. A few days passed and the two murderers quarreled over 

 a mouse. In the frequent struggles that followed, one was killed 

 outright and the other survived but twelve hours. My efforts to 

 tame these young screech-owls were only partially successful. The 

 murdered one had taken one or two excursions with me, and while 

 I walked clung to a stick carried in my hand, or nestled between 

 my arm and my body. If placed in a tree he served quite well as a 

 decoy, although perhaps some species of birds did not take him as 

 seriously as they did the barred owls when those intruded upon 

 their breeding-grounds. 



In June, 1891, I was presented with Snowdon, a full-grown 

 snowy owl, which had been captured during the preceding winter. 

 He was a dangerous-looking bird, with a temper and a trick of 

 jumping for one's fingers. I clipped one wing and began by hand- 

 ling him roughly if he showed a disposition to fight. At the end 

 of a week he learned to step upon a stick and cling to it while I 

 carried him back and forth in the cellar. Taking him to the 

 White Mountains, I gave up to his use a box stall in the northeast 

 corner of my barn, and kept damp Iceland moss for him to 

 stand upon, plenty of water for him to bathe in or drink, and a 

 moderate supply of food for his sustenance. Although we had 

 some warm weather, he was in perfect health throughout the sea- 

 son, and is now in excellent condition. At first I kept the barred 

 owls away from him, fearing that they might murder each other, 



