The Sc eech Owl 269 



I suppose years of testimony will not change the current impression that 

 Owls see but imperfectly during the daylight hours. Years of observation 

 have convinced me that they see quite as well as cats. A hairy caterpillar, 

 crawling among the blades of grass of a golfer's fair green, was seen and swooped 

 upon by the Owlet, though he had been sitting upon a fence-post some twelve 

 feet distant, blinking in the early afternoon sun. Once captured and sampled, 

 the caterpillar was rejected. A mouse would not have been refused, though 

 the Owlet had been crop-full. 



The habits of Owls in dealing with mice are well known; not so well known 

 are the details. If it is the severed head that makes the seraph, there will be 

 choirs of mice among the angels, for though such small fry are usually swallowed 

 whole, decapitation is the favorite method for piece-meal consumption. The 

 severed head, whether of mouse or bird, is apparently the favorite portion, for 

 it is eaten first. Just what gustatory pleasure an Owl takes in partially swal- 

 lowing what he can not wholly consume, I do not know, but I have seen a 

 Screech Owl compass a small house-mouse at a single gulp, though the tail of 

 the unfortunate rodent hung limply from his mandibles for some time after, 

 mute evidence that he had dined not wisely, but too well. This capacity for 

 swallowing objects, apparently large in proportion to the opening through 

 which they must pass, is partly accounted for in the fact that the Owl's upper 

 mandible is hinged and moves upward at the same time that the lower mandible 

 is moved in the opposite direction, so that the angle made by the opening of 

 the beak to receive a mouthful is obtuse in the extreme. 



I am sorry that the unwillingness of the Great Horned Owl to forego an 

 occasional chicken or roosting Grouse has brought his more beneficial congeners 

 into disrepute with the farmer and the gamekeeper. The blood of a chicken, 

 crying to them from the ground, is of more value in their sight than the secret 

 sepulture of a thousand rats, and in their haste they exclaim with the psalmist, 

 "There is none that doeth good, no, not one!" 



But though the Great Horned Owl may be driven to the more remote 

 regions, as the highwaymen to the lonely woods, the more sociable Screech 

 Owl will remain. Among ancient orchards, whose barren limbs have suffered 

 no profanation of pruning hook or devastating axe, the Screech Owl will keep 

 watch over the mysteries of night, crying softly from the shadows, like a poor 

 ghost that will ne'er be laid. 



