162 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
“We have several other owls that live hereabouts and 
do good work by killing rats, mice, snakes, lizards, ete. 
Of course, they also eat some birds, but they are so valuable 
to the farmer that he can ill spare them, and if he cannot, 
neither can we. Do you realize that it is really the farmer 
that holds the life of the country in his hand? What good 
would money and houses and clothes do us if we had no 
food? — and it is the farmer who, by carrying out the 
workings of nature, makes food possible. | 
“These birds of prey divide time between them, the 
Hawk works by day and the Owls at night and in the early 
dawn; thus, ‘Nature, in her wisdom, puts a continuous 
check upon the four-footed vermin of the ground.’ 
“Our little Screech Owls love old orchards and the 
hollow trees to be found there, and they are well suited 
to be guardians of the fruit trees. In hard winters, mice 
and rabbits will often eat the bark of young peach, pear, 
plum, and apple trees in such a way as to ruin them. 
Who can keep a constant watch upon them by day and 
night so well as the Hawks and Owls? — and if they do 
take an occasional chicken or pigeon, these are more 
easily replaced than fruit trees. 
“Then, too, our little Screech Owl is a destroyer of cut- 
worms, those dreadful worms that do their work by night. 
For this alone, should the farmer call this Owl his friend, 
and let him nest in any little hollow under the barn eaves, 
or in the old willow or sycamore, as he chooses. That is, 
if the few sticks and feathers that line the hollow can be 
called a nest. 
“The courtship of the Owl begins late in March, for 
Owls, living, as they do, permanently in their homes, 
