SJ 
size and appearance started from a maple opposite this 
• 
meadow as I was passing. 
U- 
Nyctale 
Another and very curious experience connected with 
acadica 
• 
an Owl befell me November 13th. I had spent the day at 
Ball’s Hill, as usual, and was pushing off in the canoe 
to return to Concord when I noticed a great number of 
feathers floating on the river. One of my men who had 
been at work on the shore said that he had noticed them 
passing for half-an-hour or more. During this time there 
had not been a breath of wind and they had merely drifted 
slowly with the current. As I looked I could see them 
as far as the eye could reach both up and down stream, not 
scattered about but forming a nearly straight and rather 
narrow line. 
Paddling out, I picked up a number of them and 
found that they had belonged to a Saw-whet Owl. They had 
come from every part of the bird, including the wings 
and tail. Many of the body feathers were in bunches — a 
dozen or more together. 
This trail of feathers was as easily followed as 
the paper "scent 11 used in the game of hare and hounds 
but it stopped abruptly at the foot of the Beaver Dam 
Rapid. There was a large Muskrat house on the bank at 
this place and at first I suspected that the little Owl 
had been plucked there, but upon examining the mound care¬ 
fully I failed to find so much as a single feather. 
9 
