WAYS OF THE OWL. 197 



himself when seeking concealment. I can im- 

 agine him in his Labrador wilds crouching thus 

 amid a waste of junipers and reindeer moss, and 

 baffling the eye which sought to detect him there. 



The control which owls have and exercise over 

 their feathers is not limited to moments when 

 they wish to appear terrible or inconspicuous. 

 They seem to ruffle them or smooth them, expand 

 them or withdraw them in queer ways at pleas- 

 ure. The barred owls, when stepping stealthily 

 across a floor after a dead mouse drawn by a 

 thread, tuck up their feathers as neatly as a 

 woman holds her skirts out of the mud. When 

 eating, the feathers nearest the mouth are pulled 

 aside in a most convenient way. When wet, the 

 feathers seem to shake themselves as well as to 

 be shaken by motions of the body, head, and 

 wings. My wife, in making a water-color sketch 

 of Snowdon, complained that, although she 

 could not see him move, he changed his outline 

 a dozen times in an hour. 



The owl's eye is his most useful member. The 

 popular belief that the owl is seriously blinded 

 by light is almost wholly unfounded, at least so 

 far as the species of which I am writing are 

 concerned. When a man approaches an owl in 

 broad daylight the owl, in nine cases out of ten, 

 will close his eyes, and so appear sleepy. As I 

 have already explained, this is an effort to escape 



