OWLS. 



JOHN WINTHROP SCOTT. 



BIRDS that fly in the night and 

 whose wings move so smoothly 

 through the air that the)' make 

 no noise act much like the bur- 

 glar that gets into your house quietly 

 when you are asleep to steal your 

 money. But the owl is not a burglar. 

 He is the friend of man. There is no 

 other bird that does the farmer so much 

 good as the owl. The owl comes out 

 in the dark to get the small animals 

 that are out at that time stealing things 

 from the farmer. So we may call the 

 owl the night watchman of the farm. 

 He sometimes comes out in the day- 

 time, but most owls prefer the night or 

 at least a dark day. 



The owl has been called a wise bird 

 for the same reason that some men are 

 thought to be wise — he looks wise. 

 One reason he looks so steadily at you 

 that you think he is studying you is be- 

 cause the light is so strong in the day- 

 time that his sight is bad. But the owl 

 is not as wise as he is said to be. He 

 does some foolish things as well as 

 other birds. In fact he is sometimes 

 more foolish than any other bird would 

 be in the same place. One owl was 

 known to sit for more than a half day 

 under a leaking water tap. The water 

 fell at the rate of twenty drops a min- 

 ute right down upon the owl's head, 

 and yet he was not wise enough to 

 move out of the wet. 



All owls are not too stupid to learn. 

 Puffy, a tame young owl, caught and 

 ate a two-pound pullet. An old hen 

 afterwards took a fancy to his perch. 

 She went in and gave the little owl a 

 sound whipping, and after that shared 

 the perch with him. He never forgot 

 the lesson the hen had given him and 

 always treated her well. 



Owls have a way of hiding from 

 notice by making believe they are 

 something besides owls. They can 

 move their feathers so as to change 

 their looks entirely. The great horned 

 owl sometimes makes himself a fright- 

 ful mass of feathers a yard wide, and 



at other times he seems to be a very 

 slim bird, too thin for an owl. Puffy 

 once got away from his master. He 

 flew to the top of a stump and sat like 

 a stake for an hour while his master 

 looked all round the place for him 

 without knowing there was a bird on 

 the stump in plain sight. Owls draw 

 the feathers away from their mouths in 

 an odd way when they eat, and when 

 walking softly to steal upon a mouse 

 tuck up their feathers as a lady lifts her 

 skirts. 



Owls are fond of mice. A boy who 

 had a half-grown barn owl tried him 

 one day to see how many mice he 

 would eat. The first four mice went 

 down the owl's throat very quickly. 

 Then number five and number six were 

 eaten in a short time. Number seven 

 did not go down quite as rapidly and 

 number eight was slower still. Num- 

 ber nine was taken greedily, but the 

 owl could not swallow it. The tail 

 hung out of the owl's mouth for awhile 

 before it could be fairly counted. Then 

 no more were eaten till about three 

 hours after, when the owl was pleased 

 to take four more mice. 



The gopher is a small animal that 

 does damage to growing things. It 

 digs up corn after it is planted, and it 

 gnaws the roots of fruit trees so as to 

 hurt them badly. Owls catch gophers 

 and eat them. This is one reason why 

 the farmer likes the owl so well. Barn 

 owls sometimes roost with pigeons, but 

 they are good friends. We know they 

 do not eat the pigeons because owls 

 swallow their food whole and have to 

 throw up the bones afterwards, and it 

 is known that the owls living with the 

 pigeons throw up bones of rats and 

 mice but not of pigeons. 



Sometimes so many mice have come 

 upon the farms in England that it looked 

 as if everything would be eaten up by 

 them. But a great many owls always 

 came when the mice were so thick and 

 helped the farmers save their crops. One 

 owl was seen to make, in thirty min- 



