26 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 



Some of our neighbors are uttering threats against the owl tribe, 

 which have begun to make more frequent marauding visits to the 

 poultry roosts. A few evenings since, when house lamp had just 

 been lit, we were somewhat startled by strange bufFetting sounds 

 that seemed to proceed from a barrel that stood just outside our 

 kitchen door, and was about half full of water. On going out to inves- 

 tigate, lamp in hand, two round, big, glaring eyes and a hooked beak 

 and a screech owl's beautifully mottled plumaged upper parts met 

 our vision, but the strix unfortunate was unable to rise from the 

 surface of the water. My son said to me, " Lift the bird out, it is 

 dying." " Not without a pair of tongs," replied I. I would as soon 

 handle poison sumach as that ill-omened visitor, which my son 

 speedily jerked out of the water in a dead or last dying paroxysm. 

 The owl had probably come to grief in the too eager pursuit of a big 

 moth. A friend of mine writes from St Paul three days ago : " I 

 and a friend went out to a lake about eleven miles from here the 

 other morning. We arrived at the lake shore before sunrise in 

 quest of wild ducks. All we obtained of that species of game was 

 two teal, a whistlewing duck, and one jacksnipe. Just after sunrise, 

 and whilst we were taking lunch under oak trees, we noticed a big 

 hawk strike into the lake waters and saw it soon emerge with a fish, 

 the raptore flying off to its mate, which we could see sitting on a 

 branch of a dead tree some distance off, where, we believe, the two 

 falconidee enjoyed an orthodox meal. One of the birds returned to 

 the lake and repeated its former feat, and as we had hid in ambush 

 one of us fired a shot and the fish fell from the hawk's claws ; soon 

 after the hawk came down with a mutilated wing. The bird was 

 snow white in all ; its under side parts and its extended wings 

 measured more than I could stretch to with my arms extended to 

 their uttermost." 



