WAYS OF THE OWL. 187 



to see hiin, but when night came the sparrow 

 was speedily caught, plucked, and eaten. 



The feelino' with which other birds regard an 

 owl seems to be a mixture of curiosity, hatred, 

 and fear. Curiosity impels them to approach, 

 hatred causes them to make violent and abusive 

 cries, while fear inclines them to wariness and 

 prevents them from open attack upon their 

 sphinx-like enemy. This feeling of the birds is 

 general, almost universal, and is shared in a modi- 

 fied form by the smaller owls when brought in 

 contact with large ones. To the chickadee or 

 the warbler it makes no difference whether an 

 owl is large or small : he is an owl, and that 

 prompts inspection and vituperation. In sev- 

 eral instances I have found Acadian owls in the 

 woods in consequence of the racket made by 

 birds scolding them. This winter, on the day 

 after Christmas, I was walking through a spruce 

 thicket in Albany, N. H., when the noise of nut- 

 hatches, Hudson Bay and black-capped titmice 

 and kinglets enticed me into the darkest part of 

 the growth. The birds were greatly excited, and 

 as I softly drew near them I saw that they were 

 in a circle, all facing toward some focus invisible 

 to me. I crept farther, and saw the tail of a 

 small owl projecting from behind the trunk of a 

 tree. Presently his tiny monkey face was screwed 

 around over his back, and his timid yellow eyes 



