GREAT HORNED OWL 183 



tail. Cabot makes the old bird red; Audubon, the 

 young. How well fitted these and other owls to with- 

 stand the winter ! a mere core in the midst of such a 

 muff of feathers ! Then the feet of this are feathered 

 finely to the claws, looking like the feet of a furry 

 quadruped. Accordingly owls are common here in win- 

 ter ; hawks, scarce. 



GREAT HORNED OWL ; CAT OWL * 



Nov. 18, 1851. Surveying these days the Ministerial 

 Lot. 



Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl, — hoo 

 hoo hoo, hoorer hoo. It sounds like the hooting of an 

 idiot or a maniac broke loose. This is faintly answered 

 in a different strain, apparently from a greater distance, 

 almost as if it were the echo, i. e. so far as the succession 

 is concerned. This is my music each evening. I heard 

 it last evening. The men who help me call it the " hoot- 

 ing owl" and think it is the cat owl. It is a sound ad- 

 mirably suited to the swamp and to the twilight woods, 

 suggesting a vast undeveloped nature which men have 

 not recognized nor satisfied. I rejoice that there are 

 owls. They represent the stark, twilight, unsatisfied 

 thoughts I have. Let owls do the idiotic and maniacal 

 hooting for men. This sound faintly suggests the infi- 

 nite roominess of nature, that there is a world in which 

 owls live. Yet how few are seen, even by the hunters! 



^ [From Thoreau's descriptions of the notes of bis " hooting- owls " 

 it seems probable that they were all of this species. There appear to 

 have been two pairs of these birds regnlarly settled in Concord in 

 Thoreau's time, — one in the Walden woods and one in the Ministerial 

 Swamp in the southwestern part of the town.] 



