Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/335

Rh unacquainted. Thrushes of various kinds, warblers, vireos, swallows, and sparrows treated him precisely as though he had been a barred owl. Once a grouse, with a family of chicks, confronted him boldly for a moment, while her brood scattered to cover. His conduct while at liberty was somewhat peculiar. He shunned the woods, and if taken into them, quickly made his way out. His left wing being clipped, his only method of advance was by clumsy leaps, or by a queer wobbling run, aided by outstretched wings. Whenever I placed him upon the ground, he would hurry away to a distance, and stop to pant with his wings dragging wearily at his sides. One warm morning I left him on an open pasture hill-side, and walked away to a belt of woods nearly an eighth of a mile from him. Concealing myself in the bushes, I watched him closely through my glass for an hour and a half. The time was nearly a blank. The owl, satisfied that I had gone, walked toward me about a rod and sought the shady side of a small patch of juniper. There he remained almost motionless for the entire period. Sometimes he turned his head and watched crows at a distance. Once or twice he glanced at the sky, and in one instance he followed with his eyes the flight of a small bird. Looking toward the sun did not. seem to affect his vision. That he could see things at a distance was shown in several ways. When I came slowly from my hiding-place he saw me at once, and started jumping down the hill away from me. On another occasion I took him out in a pouring rain, thinking that he would go to the woods for shelter. He was content with standing under a small apple tree which gave him practically no protection, a fact which he discovered and sought to remedy by running to another tree of the same kind. Inactive, unable or unwilling to kill mice or squirrels, even when most hungry, silent, vacant in expression, cowardly, apparently stupid, the snowy owl, judged by my one captive, is a dull and uninteresting member of an unusually acute family. I doubt Snowdon's being a fair type of his species.

The barred owls are the particular abomination of other New England birds. They are courageous, keen of vision by day and in the twilight, strong, alert, quick, yet crafty. Their voracity makes them the terror of every nesting mother, the scourge alike of the forest, the field, and the meadow. Of their merits as decoys there can be no doubt. If taken while young and clipped, they are readily tamed and taught to obey simple orders. Mine have been invaluable to me in studying the birds of New Hampshire. When going for a walk, I take one or both of the older ones. Entering their cage, I extend a short stick toward and on a level with their feet, and say, somewhat sternly, "Get on."

They generally bite the stick once and then step upon it, and