242
Lake Umbagog.
Outlet Marshes.
1897.
Sept. 11
(No 5)
led me to infer that it was starting on migration.
  Just before we left our stand to paddle after the
Black Ducks a prolonged and most cat-like scream
rang out from the stubs near Moll's Carry. Despite the
distance (nearly half-a-mile) this cry was so loud and
piercing-and withal so positively ferocious in expression -
that I confess it startled me for a moment but the
next, when it was repeated with a whoo-a ending,
I recognized the author as a Barred Owl. Why
have I never heard this cat yell in the South when
the birds are so very numerous & when I have lived
among them for weeks at a time? And why, indeed,
is it not often heard here? The cry to-night was
much shorter and less varied than that of the
bird which awakened us all at Pine Point last year.
It was exactly like the scream of an angry tom cat
but without the growling termination (this may have
been lost to me less because of the distance) and
many times louder. It could have been easily
heard a mile or more away.
[margin]Cat-like
scream of
Barred Owl[/margin]