2^2 Birds Every Child Should Know 
returned to the bird house and raised a family 
of funny, fluffy, plum.p little owlets. 
This boy discovered for himself the screech 
owls’ strange characteristic of changing their 
colour without changing their feathers, as 
moulting song birds change theirs. They have 
a rusty, reddish-brown phase and a mottled- 
gray phase. So far as is known, these changes 
of colour are not dependent upon age, sex, or 
season. No one understands what causes them 
or what they mean. Sometimes the same family 
will contain birds with plumage that is rusty- 
brown or gray or intermediate. But you may 
always know a screech owl by its small size (it 
is only about as long as a robin) and by the ear 
tufts that make it look wide-awake and very 
wise. 
By day it keeps well hidden in some deserted 
woodpecker’s hole or a hollow in some old 
orchard tree, which is its favourite residence; 
but some mischievous little birds, with sharper 
eyes than ours, often discover its hiding place, 
wake it up, and chase it, blinking and bewil- 
dered, all about the farm. By night, when its 
tormentors are asleep, this little owl goes forth 
for its supper, and then we hear its weird, 
sweet, shivering, tremulous cry. Because it 
lives near our homes and is, perhaps, the com- 
monest of the owls all over our country, every 
child can know it by sound, if not by sight. 
