BIRD LEGEND AND LIFE 



she is accredited in some localities with being a metamor- 

 phosed weaver. 



Throughout the ages no bird — ^with the exception of the 

 raven — ^has claimed the interest of or had a greater influence 

 upon man than the owl, and even to those entirely devoid of 

 superstition there is no sound in all nature so capable of call- 

 ing up a horde of nameless fears as the weird cry of this 

 strange creature haunting the moonlight and the dusk, whose 

 presence lends a picturesque note to the landscape and calls 

 into being fancies of ruins and desolation. 



When the nature lover goes out under the stars to enjoy 

 the purifying, uplifting moonlight, and to listen to the pleas- 

 ure-yielding voices of the night — crickets tuning their violins, 

 frogs singing in far-away marshes, the humming of moths, 

 the call of the katydid — each separate and distinct, with their 

 almost imperceptible undersong of the blended voices of 

 countless smaller insects and the soft sound of leaves and 

 grasses swayed by the breezes — the influences of the hour 

 awaken poetic fancies, which bear him away from earth and 

 its cares into the ethereal realm of dreams. 



Suddenly the spell of exaltation — or possibly it may be 

 only a feeling of tranquil enjoyment — ^is broken by a sound 

 coming out of the shadows and reminding him of the ter- 

 rors of the night, before unthought of; then the nocturnal 

 wanderer, even though he knows that the warning shriek is 

 but voicing the unconscious memory of a long-ago past, is 

 thankful that home is near and hurriedly seeks safety in its 

 shelter. 



"It was the owl that shrieked ; the fatal bellman 

 Which gives the sternest *good-night.' " 



