26o Twelve Months With 



The sense of hearing is very acute in all birds, 

 but the owls excel all other birds in this faculty, 

 and being practically noiseless in flight, they are 

 usually able to pounce upon any prey which their 

 very acute hearing reveals to them in the darkness. 



The fluffy wings of the owls, with their rounded, 

 downy edges, furnish one of the many interesting 

 examples of adaptation to be found among the 

 birds. Obliged to hunt their food at night by 

 stealth, they have acquired a flying apparatus that 

 is practically noiseless, no matter how rapid the 

 flight. The woodcock, also a night feeder, has no 

 such peculiar structure of the wing feathers, be- 

 cause it obtains its food by probing into the ground 

 with its long bill, and takes none of it on the wing. 

 "Nature makes no useless provisions for her 

 creatures." 



When to all these unusual characteristics of the 

 owl there is added the weird, almost human voice 

 it is small wonder that the ancients regarded the 

 bird with awe and superstitious dread. 



Another interesting February bird which fur- 

 nishes a remarkable instance of early breeding, is 

 the prairie horned lark, sometimes called shore 

 lark, because in winter it frequently resorts to the 

 shores of lakes and rivers for feeding. The horned 

 larks (of which there are two species) are the only 

 American representatives of the large and famous 

 lark family. The prairie horned lark resembles 

 the vesper sparrow somewhat in appearance. Its 

 distinguishing marks are black ear-tufts extending 



