WAYS OF THE OWL. 199 



emerged from the woods an eighth of a mile 

 from him. Great-horned owls are well known 

 to be active by day, and not inconvenienced by 

 sunlight. The barred owls, however, exhibit the 

 most marvelous powers of sight, -and their eyes 

 may well be called telescopic. In dozens of in- 

 stances Puffy has seen, and by his fixed watch- 

 ing of the sky has called my attention to, hawks 

 flying at so great a height that they were well- 

 nigh beyond man's vision. More than this, he 

 has on two or three occasions seen a hawk ap- 

 proaching in the upper air when my eyes, aided 

 by a fairly strong glass, failed to see the bird 

 until it drew nearer and grew large enough for 

 me to detect it as a mere dot in the field of the 

 lens. My eyes, by the way, are rather stronger 

 and more far-sighted than the average. If the 

 bird thus sighted by Puffy is a hawk or an eagle, 

 he watches it until it is out of sight. If it proves 

 to be a crow or a swift, he gives it merely a 

 glance and looks away. The barred owls fre- 

 quently look at the sun with their eyes half- 

 closed for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. 

 Why they do it I am wholly at a loss to explain. 

 I am in doubt as to how much Puffy can see 

 at night. I once held a cat within a few inches 

 of him in the darkness, and he did not stir. Had 

 he seen it, he would certainly have moved and 

 probably snapped his beak. In August, 1891, 



