98 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



to look like a strip of bark, they are excellent ex- 

 amples of the protective instinct at work. 



Last spring, in April, we enjoyed for several even- 

 ings a curious experience. In a meadow near our 

 farm, and beside the road under the mountain wall, 

 suddenly appeared a flock of screech-owls. There 

 must have been twoscore at the least. Evidently 

 they foregather, something like crows, at the news of 

 good hunting, and make a clean-up. This meadow, 

 which also comprised a garden and corn-field where 

 the corn had stood shocked all winter, was no doubt 

 full of mice. Beginning at sundown and keeping 

 it up till about nine or nine-thirty, the owls hunted 

 over this field for five or six nights, and then dis- 

 appeared again. They flew low, back and forth, 

 and as they flew they kept up their quavering call, 

 which, when they are on the wing, is fairly loud and 

 sounds a little like a kind of mournful laughter. 

 The air was so full of this sound, which would come 

 rustling at you overhead, and grow fainter into the 

 distance as the dim, receding form of the bird was 

 outlined against the late twilight sky, that it was 

 strangely unreal, almost as if you stood with Dante 

 on a brink where the lost souls fluttered past. Only 

 the shrill peeping of the hylas kept the sense of our 

 familiar fields in April. I had never seen so many 

 owls, of any sort, at one time before. 



There is one bird not classed with the raptores 

 which visits us in winter and must be included 

 among those foes of animal or bird life which swoop 

 down out of the air. It is the Northern shrike, or 

 butcher-bird. He is purely a winter visitor in the 

 East, and I think is growing much less common. 



