STRUCTURE OF THE OWL. 121 



To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring, 

 Dash round tlie steeple, unsubdued of wing : 

 Anuisivo birds ! say where your hid retreat. 

 When the frost rages and the tempests beat ; 

 Whence your return, by such nice instinct led. 

 When Spring, soft season, lifts her blooming head ? 

 Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride. 

 The God of Nature is your secret guide ! 

 While deepening shades obscure the face of day, 

 To yonder bench leaf-sheltered let us stray, 

 Tin blended objects fail the swimming sight, 

 And all the lading landscape sinks in night ; 

 To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by, 

 With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricket cry ; 

 To see the feeding bat glance through the wood ; 

 To catch the distant falling of the Hood ; 

 While o'er the cliff th' awakened churn owl hung, 

 Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song ; 

 While high in air, and poised upon his wings 

 Unseen, the soft enamour"d wood-lark sings ; 

 These, Nature's works, the curious mind employ. 

 Inspire a soothing melancholy joy ; 

 As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain 

 Steals o'er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein ! 

 Each rural sight, each sound, each smell, combine ; 

 The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine : 

 The new mown hay that scents the swelling breeze. 

 Or cottage chimney smoking through the trees, 

 The chilling nightKlews fall ; — away, retire ! " 



The greater proportion of the bu-ds hiuit by uight, or during the sweet but sombre 

 hom-s of twihght. Their flight is light, buoyant, noiseless, and performed by slow but 

 regular flappmg of the wings. Then- food, like that of most bu-ds of prey, is various ; 

 but they seem to prefer mice and similar small quadrupeds, probably because the habits 

 of these minute creatures are, Uke then- own, noctm-nal. Owls are soHtary, seldom more 

 than a pair being found together, although the woodcock owl (otus brachystus) is seen, 

 dm-mg autumn, in small conjomed famihes, flocks of ten or twelve together ; and the 

 Arkansa owl of America may be described as gregarious. " There is something," says 

 Wilson, " in the character of the owl so recluse, soUtary, and mysterious, something so 

 discordant in the tones of its voice, heard only amid the silence and the gloom of night, 

 and in the most lonely and sequestered situations, as to have strongly impressed the 

 minds of mankind in general with sensations of awe and abhorrence of the whole tribe. 

 The poets have indulged freely in tliis general prejudice, and in their descriptions and 

 deUneations of midnight storms, and gloomy scenes of "nature, the owl is generally intro- 

 duced to heighten the horror of the picture." 



Look at the owl, however, and it will be seen that its structiu-e accords with the 

 circumstances in which it is placed. The beak, though concealed by the margin of the 

 disc or circle of feathers on each side, radiating from the eyes, is powerful and strongly 

 cm-ved. The talons are singularly hooked, acute, and also highly retractile ; while the 

 outer toe is capable of being directed either forwards or backwards, that it may strengthen 

 the grasp, claw being opposed to claw. Should the reader have ever had an owl settle on 

 his arm or his hand, he will have an adequate remembrance of the Imld which this bird 

 can take, so precisely adajited to its mode of life. 



