172 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



to find that it weighed only one pound and one ounce. 

 It may be thin-fleshed on account of its broken wing, 

 but how light-bodied these flyers are ! It has no yellow 

 iris like the cat owl, and has the bristles about its yel- 

 low bill which the other has not. It has a very smooth 

 and handsome round head, a brownish gray. Solemnity 

 is what they express, — fit representatives of the night.* 



SAW- WHET OWL ; ACADIAN OWL 



Jan. 6, 1859. Miles had hanging in his barn a little 

 owl (^Strix Acadica)^ which he caught alive with his 

 hands about a week ago. He had forced it to eat, but 

 it died. It was a funny little brown bird, spotted with 

 white, seven and a half inches long to the end of the 

 tail, or eight to the end of the claws, by nineteen in 

 alar extent, — not so long by considerable as a robin, 

 though much stouter. This one had three (not two)^ 

 white bars on its tail, but no noticeable white at the 

 tip. Its cunning feet were feathered quite to the ex- 

 tremity of the toes, looking like whitish (or tawny- 

 white) mice, or as when one pulls stockings over his 

 boots. As usual, the white spots on the upper sides of the 

 wings are smaller and a more distinct white, while those 

 beneath are much larger, but a subdued, satiny white. 

 Even a bird's wing has an upper and under side, and 

 the last admits only of more subdued and tender colors. 



^ [Thoreau had once before seen a live barred owl, and he gives an 

 account of it in the chapter on " Winter Visitors " in Walden. This 

 account does not appear in the published Journal. It was probably 

 ■written in one of those early journals ■which -were destroyed in the 

 preparation of the Week and Walden.l 



^ [Now Cryptoglaux acadica.] ^ Nuttall says three. 



