The American Barn Owl 
Taken in San Luis Obispo County Photo by the Author 
A ’DOBE NESTING CLIFF 
But consider, I pray, the merits of the Barn Owl. She is on duty 
365 nights in the year. Rising punctually when the sun is well set, she 
sallies forth to review and regulate her realm with tireless diligence. 
Softer than silk, or than any similitude, are her aerial floatings. All 
gentle things trust her, and none save mischief-makers have aught to 
fear from her gentle sway. 
As for her beauty, who may say that in her robes of white, overlaid 
with filmiest laces of the dusk and set out with burnishings of ochraceous 
gold, she is not, indeed, the fairest of night birds, and entitled as such 
to unbroken rule? Though the populace hoots, as it always has, when 
confronted with claims which it does not understand, and dishonors this 
gentle bird with such a vulgar name as “Monkey-faced Owl,” on those 
occasions, fortunately rare, when our heroine is dragged forth into the 
disabling light of day, we insist that this is Beauty’s self, and Aphrodite’s 
double, appointed for the rulership of Night. 
But when the “Night-bird” sings—ah, there is pause, food for medita¬ 
tion and regret. For, like the lordly peacock, bird of Juno, the Barn Owl 
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