186 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



Jan. 7, 1854. I went to these woods * partly to hear 

 an owl, but did not ; but, now that I have left them 

 nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly, hoorer hoo. 

 Strange that we should hear this sound so often, loud 

 and far, — a voice which we call the owl, — and yet so 

 rarely see the bird. Oftenest at twilight. It has a sin- 

 gular prominence as a sound ; is louder than the voice 

 of a dear friend. Yet we see the friend perhaps daily 

 and the owl but few times in our lives. It is a sound 

 which the wood or the horizon makes. I see the cars 

 almost as often as I hear the whistle. 



Dec. 9, 1856. From a little east of Wyman's I look 

 over the pond 2 westward. The sun is near setting, away 

 beyond Fair Haven. A bewitching stillness reigns 

 through all the woodland and over the snow-clad land- 

 scape. Indeed, the winter day in the woods or fields has 

 commonly the stillness of twilight. The pond is per- 

 fectly smooth and full of light. I hear only the strokes 

 of a lingering woodchopper at a distance, and the me- 

 lodious hooting of an owl, which is as common and 

 marked a sound as the axe or the locomotive whistle. 

 Yet where does the ubiquitous hooter sit, and who sees 

 him? In whose wood-lot is he to be found? Few eyes 

 have rested on him hooting ; few on him silent on his 

 perch even. Yet cut away the woods never so much 

 year after year, though the chopper has not seen him 

 and only a grove or two is left, still his aboriginal voice 

 is heard indefinitely far and sweet, mingled oft, in 

 strange harmony, with the newly invented din of trade, 

 like a sentence of Allegri sounded in our streets, — 



1 [Ministerial Swamp.] a [Walden Pond.] 



