jBlote^ from JFielD anti ^tudp 



A Strenuous Screech Owl 



During the summer of 1903 my feeling for 

 Screech Owls underwent a decided change, 

 a large degree of respect being added to the 

 fondness already felt for the species. It was 

 all due to a family of five young ones which 

 were discovered one day late in May, 

 perched along a branch about thirty feet 

 above the carriage drive. The parents were 

 near and furnished good examples of the two 

 extremes of color, one being decidedly gray, 

 the other as rusty as a Thrasher. The 

 youngsters were about evenly divided as to 

 color; and how comical they were as they 

 craned their necks to look down with those 

 big yellow-rimmed eyes, or hunched up 

 their shoulders till the heads were literally 

 buried among the soft feathers! 



All the afternoon they sat there in the sun 

 scarcely changing their position, though the 

 old birds had shifted; but about seven 

 o'clock the familiar quavering call aroused 

 them. The rusty parent appeared presently, 

 and by short Hights and many low calls — 

 both the usual tremulous note and a soft 

 'coo coo coo coo,' that reminded me of the 

 Mourning Dove — persuaded the little ones 

 to leave their perches. But as it grew 

 darker the rusty Owl began to object to my 

 presence, flying past with loud cracking of 

 the bill and sometimes a sharp 'yotu yoivf 

 and finally struck me on the side of the head 

 a soft enough blow save for the pair of claws 

 that seized n^ scalp with a grip that made 

 me sympathize with any mouse they might 

 fasten upon. The bird was gone in an in- 

 stant, but I had no desire to prolong the 

 experience. 



A few weeks later the same family, pre- 

 sumably, moved into some trees near tlie 

 house, and any one who approached that 

 quarter after dusk was likely to hear many 

 bill-crackings and angry, snarling notes, as 

 the old bird — always, so far as I could judge, 

 the rusty one — swooped past the intruder. 

 At first we often replied to the calls, but 



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this made the rusty Owl so furious that it 

 several times darted under the roof of the 

 piazza and past our heads, and at last was 

 emboldened to make another personal at- 

 tack, this time slightly breaking the skin 

 of the victim. The danger to eyes was too 

 great, and all our calling \vas stopped. 

 Afterthat the birds made no trouble beyond 

 angry notes and snapping, and by August 

 even these ceased. — Is.^bella McC. Lem- 

 MON, Engleiuood, N. J. 



Goldfinch and Tree Sparrow — 

 Difference in Feeding 



I noticed last winter a marked differ- 

 ence in the manner in which the Goldfinch 

 and Tree Sparrow procure the seeds of the 

 evening primrose when feeding upon the 

 stalks sticking above the snow. The 

 Goldfinch flies to the cluster of seed-capsules 

 at the top of a stalk, and clings there while 

 it extracts the seeds with its bill. The Tree 

 Sparrow, on the other hand, alights upon 

 the stalk and shakes it vigorously — making 

 the seed rattle — until it has shaken out a 

 number of the seeds, when it drops down to 

 the snow and picks them up. — Chreswei.l 

 J. Hunt, Philadelphia, Pa. 



Taming a Red-eyed Vireo 



While walking through the yard of Har- 

 vard University, Cambridge, last summer, 

 my wife and I noticed, at the foot of some 

 shrubbery near Appleton Chapel, a young 

 Red-eyed Vireo in the early stages of learn- 

 ing to fly. Just above our heads, in the 

 drooping boughs of one of those fine old 

 elms, was the parent bird with food for its 

 fledgling. To our surprise, before we 

 could move away it dropped down into the 

 bushes and fed the little fellow. Anxious to 

 see how close the old bird would venture, 

 we placed the young bird higher up in the 

 bushes and took our stand close by. On 

 her return the old bird did not hesitate, but 

 came within a few feet of us and deliv- 



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