OF THE MARSH 191 



nightly perching place of the young are nests of 

 small birds. About the marsh the Screech-owl 

 flits like a ghost-bird. Never a sound from wing or 

 throat as it flaps or skims in the half-light, watching 

 the ground with its cat's eyes as it goes, until suddenly 

 the silence is startled by a single, rasping yell such 

 as might make the hair stand on the back of every 

 mouse for a quarter of a mile around. The Arch- 

 mouser is on the trail, and such a master of his craft 

 that he appears at times to toot his horn in contempt 

 of his quarry. Or, is this sudden shriek used to start 

 any mouse that may be lurking below, so that when 

 moving it may be more readily discerned? 



I remember that when the "harvest" moon made 

 brilliant nights in September of 1904, one of these 

 birds came to fly at a height of about fifty feet 

 above a grass field before my house, using a flapping 

 motion of the wings and a lingering flight that 

 suggested minute examination of the ground so far 

 beneath it. From time to time it gave utterance 

 to a rasping yell not unlike the harsh scream of a 

 Parrot. 



But upon one occasion about this time the bird 

 indulged me with the full quality of its screech. I 

 was reading late at night in my room at the top of 

 the house in perfect stillness, a light burning near 

 a partly opened window. No warning of approach 

 was given until the Owl, close to the window and 

 probably startled by the light, shrieked into the 

 silent room as it cleared the eaves a shriek, as it 

 seemed at that hour, more like that of some night- 

 haunting Banshee than a mousing Owl. 



In late summer, the strange noises of the young 



