FEBRUARY FEATHERS 35 



discover in his poor stomach repay us for the 

 thought of having needlessly cut short his life, 

 with its pleasures and spring courtships, and the 

 delight he will take in the half a dozen pearls over 

 which he will soon watch? 



A much better way is to examine the ground 

 around his favourite roosting place, where we will 

 find many pellets of fur and bones, with now and 

 then a tiny skull. These tell the tale, and if at 

 dusk we watch closely, we may see the screech owl 

 look out of his door, stretch every limb, purr his 

 shivering song, and silently launch out over the 

 fields, a feathery, shadowy death to all small mice 

 who scamper too far from their snow tunnels. 



When you feel like making a new and charming 

 acquaintance, take your way to a dense clump of 

 snow-laden cedars, and look carefully over their 

 trunks. If you are lucky you will spy a tiny gray 

 form huddled close to the sheltered side of the 

 bark, and if you are careful you may approach and 

 catch in your hand the smallest of all our owls, 

 for the saw-whet is a dreadfully sleepy fellow in 

 the daytime. I knew of eleven of these little gray 

 gnomes dozing in a clump of &ve small cedars. 



The cedars are treasure-houses in winter, and 

 many birds find shelter among the thick foliage, 

 and feast upon the plentiful supply of berries, 

 when elsewhere there seems little that could keep 

 a bird's life in its body. When the tinkling of 

 breaking icicles is taken up by the wind and 



