WAYS OF THE OWL. 



3'9 



"by his plumage, lie uses water freely. When given a cod's head 

 or a large bird, he stands upon it and tears off morsels much as 

 Snowdon does. His motions in doing this are sudden and his 

 whole expression fierce and tiger-like. With horns slightly flat- 

 tened and eyes glaring, he first plucks a piece of flesh from the 

 carcass and then turns his head sharply from side to side to see 

 whether any other owl dares to intrude upon his repast. My 



SXOWDON. 



Puffy. 



Great-horned. 



"barred, snowy, and great-horned owls all feed freely in the day- 

 time. My screech-owls, on the contrary, usually waited until dark 

 before devouring their food. One of them apparently ignored a 

 live English sparrow for several hours while daylight lasted and 

 the sparrow was able to see him, but when night came the spar- 

 row was speedily caught, plucked, and eaten. 



The feeling with which other birds regard an owl seems to be 

 a mixture of curiosity, hatred, and fear. Curiosity impels them 

 to approach, hatred causes them to make violent and abusive 

 cries, while fear inclines them to wariness and prevents them 

 from open attack upon their sphinx-like enemy. This feeling of 

 the birds is general, almost universal, and is shared in a modified 

 form by the smaller owls when brought in contact with large 

 ones. To the chickadee or the warbler it makes no difference 

 whether an owl is large or small ; he is an owl, and that prompts 

 inspection and vituperation. In several instances I have found 

 Acadian owls in the woods in consequence of the racket made 

 by birds scolding them. This winter, on the day after Christmas, 

 I was walking through a spruce thicket in Albany, N. H., when 

 the noise of nuthatches, Hudson Bay and black-capped titmice 



