94 Bird -Lore 



humorous expressions whenever approached that, from the first, they would 

 have been objects of continual interested observation, were it not for the rather 

 discouraging fact that this almost always brought on a quarrel. The bright 

 light and excited feelings seemed to confuse one so much that he would mistake 

 the others for enemies and pounce on them. This caused equally fierce retal- 

 iation every time, and resulted in all three being scratched about the thighs. 

 Darkening the coop remedied this. 



It impressed me then as strange that, with all the birds' show of aggres- 

 siveness, there was no snapping of beaks nor marked disposition to bite; but I 

 later found that they did not have the same strength in their beaks as most 

 varieties of Owls, particularly the Great Horned Owls, which crush the skull 

 of a rabbit with such ease. This, I suppose, has something to do with the 

 species' love of very small mammals, which can be torn to pieces and swallowed 

 without trouble by those queer cavernous mouths. Their hooked claws, which 

 gripped me on several occasions, were all right, though and as sharp as needles. 



The youngsters were left severely alone until evening, when, with the lessen- 

 ing light, came a quick change. They seemed to lose some of their fear, and 

 to be expectantly listening for something. Every now and then one would utter 

 a rasping cry, which blended harmoniously with the insect chorus and yet 

 could be heard a long distance. 



Just as the sun set and the glow still spread over the west, the cries became 

 very insistent, and a shadow seemed to pass for an instant over the coop as 

 one of the parents flew quietly into a locust tree nearby, and stood there close 

 to the trunk, a mouse dangling from the left foot. It soon flew out and circled 

 noiselessly, only to disappear very soon, much to the disgust of the coop occu- 

 pants. Several minutes elapsed, the evening silence broken only by the rasp- 

 ing call and the drum of the katy-dids; then an old Owl circled by bearing a 

 mouse in its beak. It may have been the same bird and the same mouse, the 

 deepening shadows making it impossible to see accurately 



The night being dark, I left my hiding-place and the birds until morning, 

 when it was surprising to find only the smallest of the three in the coop, and 

 that dead. The other two had escaped; but how they squeezed beneath slats 

 which allowed only the tiniest chicks to go through will ever be a mystery to 

 me. I could not even pull out the remaining one. It was much less developed 

 than the other two, both in size of limb and feather, and had evidently suc- 

 cumbed to the effects of the frightful fall, though its body showed no bruise. 



I hunted around the debris of the felled trees, and finally spied the others, 

 which had done some expert climbing and hidden in the darkest corners, one 

 beneath a tree trunk, the other in a leafy top where it had evidently stayed 

 all night, as evidenced by a kind of bed stamped down and lined with surplus 

 food carried there by the parents. Such a supper! three particularly fine 

 meadow mice and a fat star-nosed mole, all freshly killed and whole. 



The youngsters, which at first crouched silently, were in a very bitter frame 



