WAYS OF THE OWL. 199 



emerged from the woods an eighth of a mile 

 from him. Great-horned owls are well known 

 to be active by day, and not inconvenienced by 

 sunlight. The barred owls, however, exhibit the 

 most marvelous powers of sight, and their eyes 

 may well be called telescopic. In dozens of in- 

 stances Puffy has seen, and by his fixed watch- 

 ing of the sky has called my attention to, hawks 

 flying at so great a height that they were well- 

 nigh beyond man's vision. More than this, he 

 has on two or three occasions seen a hawk ap- 

 proaching in the upper air when my eyes, aided 

 by a fairly strong glass, failed to see the bird 

 until it drew nearer and grew large enough for 

 me to detect it as a mere dot in the field of the 

 lens. My eyes, by the way, are rather stronger 

 and more far-sighted than the average. If the 

 bird thus sighted by Puffy is a hawk or an eagle, 

 he watches it until it is out of sight. If it proves 

 to be a crow or a swift, he gives it merely a 

 glance and looks away. The barred owls fre- 

 quently look at the sun with their eyes half- 

 closed for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. 

 Why they do it I am wholly at a loss to explain. 

 I am in doubt as to how much Puffy can see 

 at night. I once held a cat within a few inches 

 of him in the darkness, and he did not stir. Had 

 he seen it, he would certainly have moved and 

 probably snapped his beak. In August, 1891, 



