13-1 FAMILIAR FEATURES OF THE ROADSIDE. 



The last strange- voiced creature is the oddest of 

 all ; it is the screech owl {Megascops asio), a blood- 

 thirsty little Tillain, scarcely eight inches tall as he sits 

 on a bough ; nevertheless he sings. His colors are 

 brown and gray, and they are pretty well mixed. In 

 some specimens which I have seen the coloring is 

 decidedly ruddy ; but this is not to be wondered at 

 as the birds are extremely variable in the general 

 tone of tlieir plumage. The screech owl makes her 

 nest in the hollow trunk of a tree ; it is, of course, a 

 very slight affair, of much the same character as a 

 hen's nest, with bits of gi-ass, feathers, shreds of bark, 

 and so forth, in its make up. The eggs are white, 

 clean, and nearly round in form ; tliei'e are from 

 three to five in a nest. 



I said the owl sang ; but I must admit that the 

 song is not altogether musical, for it has yet another 

 far more ascendant quality. There is something 

 eerie about its cadence, something depressing about 

 its unearthly sadness, which on a dark night makes 

 one's flesh creep ! We might take it for the despair- 

 ing, quavering voice of a lost and wandering spirit, 

 or the distant ghostly cheers of Henrick Hudson's 



sucker utters the hollow whirr when perohed and while holding 

 his head downward. I doubt it, though. Frank M. Chapman, I 

 am glad to say, considers that the niglit hawk's whirr is produced 

 by the passage of air through the bird's primaries, i. e., larger wing 

 leathers. 



