BIRD LEGEND AND LIFE 



on the groirnd, fastening them to the spot, when they are 

 easily picked up. In this way she rids our fields of what 

 might become troublesome pests if not held in check, thereby 

 insuring the proper balance of nature. 



The call of the owl, heard most frequently in the early 

 part of the nights of late spring and early summer, when the 

 young are in the nest, seems to be a cry of recognition or 

 salutation between mates or parent birds and their young, 

 calling to each other in a tongue meaningless to us, but full 

 of purport to them. There is no more blood-curdling sound 

 in all nature than the quivering wail of the great horned owl 

 beginning on a high key and with a piercing tremolo running 

 down the scale — a sound, once heard, never to be forgotten. 

 It is like the scream of a woman in terrible agony. To one 

 hearing it, the Eskimo story is plausible enough, for nothing 

 less than a crushed face could call forth such a shriek. 



On seeing the owl issuing from her hole in a tree or 

 sitting on a limb close to its bole, where, with her protective 

 coloration, she might easily be mistaken for a knot, we read- 

 ily recognize the flattened face of the erstwhile maiden, with 

 its close-pressed nose and affrighted eyes, and as she moves off 

 across the wood her stunned, staggering flight, also, tells of 

 the misfortune from which the years have not aided her in 

 recovering. 



In every land some of her descendants may be fdund, 

 in all some two hundred species, and although they differ 

 somewhat in size and in color, they each and every one bear 

 the marks — in appearance, expression and nature of the 

 calamity that befell their earliest progenitor — ^the flattened 

 face, the pained human voice, the shrinking habits. 



The most common forms in America are the speckled 

 buff bam, or monkey-faced owl — ^belonging to a family dis- 



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