Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/338

324 will put a cat to flight when on his mettle, Fluffy is frightened almost out of his wits by them.

A Japanese toy-bird, made of a piece of wood and a few scarlet feathers, was eagerly seized by Puffy, indicating not only a lack of power of smell, but the presence of an appreciation of color. I have fancied that an appreciation of color is also shown by barred owls in their frequent selection of beech trees as nesting-places, by great-horned owls in their choice of brown-trunked trees, and by Snowdon in an apparent preference for gray backgrounds.

To this real or imaginary ability of the owls to select protective backgrounds is to be joined an undoubted power of assuming protective shapes. My great-horned owl can vary at will from a mass of bristling feathers a yard wide, swaying from side to side as he rocks from one foot to the other, to a slim, sleek, brown post only a few inches wide, with two jagged points rising from its upper margin. When blown out and defiant, his bill is snapping like a pair of castanets, and his yellow eyes are opening and shutting and dilating and contracting their pupils in a way worthy of a fire-breathing Chinese dragon. In repose he is neither inflated nor sleek, but a well-rounded, comfortable mass of feathers. The barred owls go through the same processes of expanding and arching out their wings when awaiting attack, and of drawing all their feathers closely to their sides when endeavoring to avoid observation. In one instance Puffy escaped from me in the woods, perched upon a small beech stump, drew his feathers into such a position that he seemed a mere continuation of the stump, closed his feathered eyelids until only a narrow slit remained for him to peep through, and stayed perfectly stiff for an hour while I hunted for him high and low. I passed by him several times without bringing my eyes to the point of recognizing him as a living thing. This power is shared by the screech-owl and the long-eared owl. The plumage of the snowy owl is so solid that he seems more scaly or hairy than feathered. He does not, so far as my specimen shows, expand and arch his wings. Instead of standing straight and becoming slim and rigid, he crouches and flattens himself when seeking concealment. I can imagine him in his Labrador wilds crouching thus amid a waste of junipers and reindeer moss, and baffling the eye which sought to detect him there.

The control which owls have and exercise over their feathers is not limited to moments when they wish to appear terrible or inconspicuous. They seem to ruffle them or smooth them, expand them or withdraw them in queer ways at pleasure. The barred owls, when stepping stealthily across a floor after a dead mouse drawn by a thread, tuck up their feathers as neatly as a woman hold her skirts out of the mud. When eating, the feathers nearest the mouth are pulled aside in a most convenient way.