Screech Owl Johnnie 



By FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY 



WHEN watching birds in northwestern Oregon in June*, just before 

 daylight one morning, I began hearing queer httle Owl-Uke noises 

 from the garden, and that night at dusk, when they came again, I 

 went out to investigate. Tom, the big house-cat who had tried to catch a 

 Dusky Grouse who had brought her brood from the forest a few days before, 

 had also heard the calls, and with the keen ears of a hunter distinguished 

 them from the rest of the evening chorus and located them as coming from a 

 long trellis covered with a dense thorny mass of Himalaya blackberries in the 

 garden. Creeping up under the trellis he gave a tiger-like spring and mounted 

 the frame with the proud air of having already secured his prey. But no 

 prey was visible, and the briars reinforced my remarks so sentiently that he 

 reluctantly jumped down. 



By this time it had grown so dusky that I could discover nothing, but 

 the keen-eyed fisherman of the family — we were near one of Oregon's famous 

 salmon bays — joined in the search and, leaning close over the vines, finally 

 exclaimed: "Here he is!" Even then I had to press on hard with my eyes, as 

 Mr. Burroughs puts it, to see anything but a tangle of white blooming sprays. 

 It was as baffling as a puzzle picture illustrating protective coloration, for the 

 vermiculated down covering the small Owl made him fairly melt into his back- 

 ground of white blooming vines. There he sat, however, with his plump, un- 

 mistakable Owl-like form and blackish markings around his eyes, looking as 

 calm as a king in the midst of his barricade of thorns. Wise mother! With 

 his perfect disguise and a thorn homa that would baffle a cat, she might well 

 have risked leaving him there alone through the day, though it were only a 

 few steps from the house. 



As it was too dark even to see if he had ears, I suggested putting him in a 

 box until morning; but when the fisherman came with a gunny sack and a 

 stout stick, quite natural paraphernalia for one of his profession, I began to 

 weaken. Suppose the little fellow should get hurt! In frightened struggles 

 his delicate little wings and legs might easily suffer from passes of that bludgeon. 

 Then, if he were in a box all night, how could his parents feed him? In 

 the morning they would have gone to the woods. 



With a belated idea I hurried to the house and, returning, raised my arm 

 high over the thorny sprays and flashed my electric torch over the Owlet until 

 his lemon-yellow eyes drooped before the light. A downy nestling indeed! 

 And, yes, there were tiny ear-tufts. Suggestions of a black facial disk, a light 

 band under the bill, and a vermiculated black-and-white body completed the 

 picture. Once more I raised the torch over his head to examine his potential 

 ear-tufts, but he sat stolid as a sphinx, making no move and uttering no re- 

 monstrance. I had seen his markings as well, much better than if I had 



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