SCREECH OWL 179 



While I write this evening, I see that there is ground for 

 much superstition in it. It looks out on me from a dusky 

 corner of its box with its great solemn eyes, so perfectly 

 still itself. I was surprised to find that I could imitate its 

 note as I remember it, by a guttural whinnering. 



A remarkably squat figure, being very broad in pro- 

 portion to its length, with a short tail, and very cat-like 

 in the face with its horns and great eyes. Remarkably 

 large feet and talons, legs thickly clothed with whitish 

 down, down to the talons. It brought blood from my 

 fingers by clinging to them. It would lower its head, 

 stretch out its neck, and, bending it from side to side, peer 

 at you with laughable circumspection ; from side to side, as 

 if to catch or absorb into its eyes every ray of light, strain 

 at you with complacent yet earnest scrutiny. Raising 

 and lowering its head and moving it from side to side 

 in a slow and regular manner, at the same time snapping 

 its bill smartly perhaps, and faintly hissing, and puffing 

 itself up more and more, — cat-like, turtle-like, both in 

 hissing and swelling. The slowness and gravity, not to 

 say solemnity, of this motion are striking. There plainly 

 is no jesting in this case. 



General color of the owl a rather pale and perhaps 

 slightly reddish brown, the feathers centred with black. 

 Perches with two claws above and two below the perch. 

 It is a slight body, covered with a mass of soft and 

 light-lying feathers. Its head muffled in a great hood. 

 It must be quite comfortable in winter. Dropped a 

 pellet of fur and bones (?) in his cage. He sat, not 

 really moping but trying to sleep, in a corner of his 



