Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/160

148 screech-owl, with its staring eyes and pert, ear-like tufts, has a decidedly cattish look. In truth, it wears a grave, grimalkin cast of countenance, which, in a bird, is quite uncanny and unnatural. A mounted specimen in my parlor was an object of dread to a little girl visiting us from the city. It availed nothing to tell the child that little Motley would not hurt her, while the unbird-like little thing would stare at her so.

To the naturalist Scops asio has been a provoking elf. It is to be hoped that the sage-looking little fellow did not scoff behind his gravity at these learned men, or count any of them asinine whom he so misled by his eccentric freakiness in dress. Coming before a man of science at one time wearing a suit of sober frieze, again appearing in mottled gray, and anon clad gayly in tawny red, how ludicrously easy and inviting was the trick of specie-making! Well, that controversy is over now, and to write the strife down as history would be enough to make Motley bristle to his toes.

The American long-eared owl (Otus Wilsonianus, Less.) (Fig. 5),



is a fine bird, some fifteen inches long, and is strictly nocturnal. It often breeds in deserted nests of other large birds; but is not over-scrupulous, as it will sometimes drive away the rightful occupant of a nest, and take possession. The facial disk is perfect. Its home is temperate America, up to Hudson's Bay. "Its cry is plaintive, consisting of two or three prolonged notes repeated at intervals."

3. The Syrninœ, or gray owls. In this sub-family is found the largest bird of the species known in America; also the smallest specimen east of the Mississippi. Their tails are large and round. Even for owls, they have large heads, but smallish eyes, and no ear-tufts, or these almost unnoticeable. One of these is represented by Fig. 6, the barred owl (Syrnium nebulosum, Boie). The average size is twenty