Cambridge, Mass.
1912.
August 15
[August 15, 1912]

Family of Screech Owls in The Garden

  There were three young birds together in the leaning paper birch
between 8 & 9 A.M. but only one at 2 P.M. We did not see the adult.
August 16 [August 16, 1912]  One young bird in the birch, another on the Porter apple stump, 
the red mother in extreme top of cherry tree.
August 17 [August 17, 1912]  Three young spent day in leaning birch. Their mother was in
her favorite cherry tree, at its very top and so hidden among dense
foliage that we could scarce make her out. In July the
young uttered by night a sound very like that of ripping cotton
cloth. Sometimes it came rather frequently from different parts
of the garden, especially as twilight was passing into dark.
Towards the end of the month it was heard less often and
gradually changed in character so as to begin to resemble the
wailing of adult birds. Since August came in the young have
maintained almost unbroken silence but it was probably one of
these whom I heard two or three nights ago giving a very
peculiar, short cry, having a rising inflection and suggesting the
snarl of a cat although not like that either. I heard this very same cry in
the Garden last year, after returning from England.