Though numerous here, yet trap and gun have so reduced the wood owls
that you may listen half the night by a cover and never hear the
'Who-hoo' that seems to demand your name.
The barn owls are more liable to be shot, because they are more
conspicuous; but, on the other hand, as they often breed and reside away
from covers, they seem to escape. For months past one of these has
sailed by my window every evening uttering a hissing 'skir-r-r.' Here,
some were nailed with their backs to the wall, that they might not hide
their guilty faces.
The delicate texture of the owl's feathers is very remarkable: these
birds remind me of a huge moth. The owls were more showy than the hawks,
though it is commonly said that without sunlight there is no colour--as
in the case of plants grown in darkness. Yet the hawks are day birds,
while the owls fly by night. There came the sound of footsteps; and I
retreated, casting one glance backward at the black and white, the blue
and brown colours that streaked the wall, while the dull green weasels
were in perpetual shadow. By night the bats would flit round and about
that gloomy place. It would not do to return by the same path, lest
another keeper might be coming up it; so I stepped into the wood itself.
To those who walk only in the roads, hawks and owls seem almost rare.
But a wood is a place to which they all flock; and any wanderer from the
north or west naturally tends thither.
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