Awl

“ Owl, who holds court every night by the light of the moon in the hollow of a great grey tree over the ridge. He is the wisest of birds and knows everything. I have heard, too, that whenever there is a star with a tail in the sky he can read your fortunes and your character. Now it so happens that at this very time there is in the sky a star with a tail, for I saw it this morning. Little Bluey, my eldest child, woke up very early and I had to fly out to get him a worm to keep him quiet. Just as I was starting, long before sunrise, I saw the comet. ”

“ The whish of a duck's wings can be heard two or three hundred yards on a still night. The wings of an eagle rustle like silk in the wind as he mounts upward. A sparrow's wings flutter or whir as he changes his flight. Every one knows the startled rush of a quail or grouse. But no ear ever heard the passing of a great owl, spreading his five-foot wings in rapid flight.
He knows well, however, when to vary his program. Once I saw him hovering at dusk over some wild land covered with bushes and dead grass, a favorite winter haunt of meadow-larks. ”

“ The owl came last, and when asked if he had seen the man, he said “hoo-hoo.” “The man who lived here,” said the brother. “Last night I was hunting mice in the woods south of here and I saw a man sleeping beneath a plum tree. I thought it was your brother, Rabbit, so I didn’t awaken him,” said the owl.
“Good for you, owl,” said the brother, “for this good news, you shall hereafter roam around only at night, and I will fix your eyes, so the darker the night the better you will be able to see. You will always have the fine cool nights to hunt your food. ”

“ Of a single owl but little can be said; but before the family separates, and while the young are receiving their lessons in mouse-hunting, it becomes very evident, first, that owls are great talkers; and, secondly, that they are decidedly intelligent. I was impressed with these facts during a pleasant moonlight evening last October, when, having taken my stand to watch the owls, I saw the whole family of six as they came from their nest in the tree. The old birds first appeared, flew directly toward the meadow, and disappeared in the long grass. ”

“ The flight of the Great Horned Owl is elevated, rapid and graceful. It sails with apparent ease, and in large circles, in the manner of an eagle, rises and descends without the least difficulty, by merely inclining its wings or its tail, as it passes through the air. Now and then, it glides silently close over the earth, with incomparable velocity, and drops, as if shot dead, on the prey beneath. At other times, it suddenly alights on the top of a fence-stake or a dead stump, shakes its feathers, arranges them, and utters a skriek so horrid that the woods around echo to its dismal sound. ”

“ But since that time, when I have seen an owl, even a barn owl, or a great horned owl, swiftly cross the sky in the darkness of night, I have felt that I could accompany it, in imagination, on its secret quest. It will arrive silently, like the angel of death, in a tree overlooking a field in which a rat, whose hour has come, is furtively feeding, all alert and tremulous, but unaware of any impending danger. ”

“ And the owl hath a bride, who is fond and bold, And loveths the woods deep gloom; And, with eyes like the shine of the moonstone cold, She awaiteth her ghastly groom; Not a feather she moves, not a carol she sings, But when her heart heareth his flapping wings, She hoots out her welcome shrill; O, when the moon shines and the dogs do howl, Then, then, is the joy of the horned owl!
Mourn not for the owl nor his gloomy plight; The owl hath his share of good: If a prisoner he be in broad daylight, He is lord in the dark green wood ”

“ The Owl, with its staring aspect and noiseless flight, has become with them a bird of ill omen; its doleful hoot echoing through the shades of night, over the house of sickness, is an infallible prediction of death. ”

“ Frances Wright Once upon a time the owls were the largest and the most dull and stupid of all the birds of the air. While the eagle soared above the mountain's crest to hail the sun before his rising, and the lark carolled his matin in the blue fields of ether, the owls were snoring; when the thrush and the blackbird, retreating from the heat of noon, filled the deep groves with their melody, the owls snored out the sylvan concert; and when the soft cushat poured his evening tale of love into the ear of his listening mate, the owls were still snoring in their unbroken and dreamless sleep. ”

“ At night, when it is feeding, coursing up and down above the heather and the brackens, it has a beautiful flight, and should an owl suddenly drop over the birches and begin to beat their ground, the evolutions of the nightjars in silent protest are as exquisite as any sea-bird’s. ”

“ An Owl moves so silently that you can never see him come. Where other Birds have feathers he has hair, and this makes no noise when he moves. You can hear the rustle of a Duck’s wings, the flutter of a Sparrow or a Lark, and the wind fairly screams through the Eagle’s pinions when you spend a dollar, but the breeze makes no more noise blowing through an Owl’s wings than it does in passing over your own head. ”

“ In the days when there was always a hawk or two hovering over the ploughed land, or keeping watch over the green meadows, and when we used to hear the owls in the summer nights, and saw the white owl who lived somewhere near by sail silently in the grey of evening across the lawn—in those days we knew little of the plague of field-mice. ”

“ A great owl ensconced in a tree not far away began and maintained for a long time its monotonous “hoot-a-hoot a-hoo,” while away in the distant forest gloom, rising at times shrill and distinct above the fitful wind, he heard the wail of the catamount or panther, the saddest and most mournful sound that ever broke the solitude of forest gloom. ”

“ In its plunge, if you watch it bathing, you may see it dip its breast just as much under the water as a porpoise shows its back above. You can only rightly describe the bird by the resemblances, and images of what it seems to have changed from,—then adding the fantastic and beautiful contrast of the unimaginable change. It is an owl that has been trained by the Graces. It is a bat that loves the morning light. ”

“ A tawny owl lives in a pollard hornbeam in this clump; he comes regularly at dusk to my cottage and hoots with mournful insistence to the barn owls that roost under the thatch. Rabbits’ bones and fur, finches’ feathers, and the fragile skulls of mice hang in the crevices of the tree, hundreds of them, some fresh and white, others hidden under the brown dust of decay that trickles from the old tree’s dead heart. ”

“ While fireflies whirl, and nightbirds feed,
Thy notes waft o'er the darkened mead.
The owl is heard from hill afar,
While sinks to rest the evening star.
The full moon lights the eastern sky;
Thy song becomes a lullaby. ”

“ Once an owl—the nomad, short-eared owl of the marshes—let forth a hoot that would have sent a nervous lady into "astericks," and sent them into no-where, as if it had detonated a charge of that lively mystery called T.N.T. under their dainty feet. Once, just as they were lapping like dogs at the edge of the ice that was conspiring to span the brook, an otter shot up his head—jaws wide and dripping—almost under their long and pointed noses, and they, with one accord, and driven by their long tails acting as a spring, leapt simply into space. ”

“ The owl stands quite perpendicular, presenting a front of light mottled gray; the eyes are closed to a mere slit, the ear-feathers depressed, the beak buried in the plumage, and the whole attitude is one of silent, motionless waiting and observation. If a mouse should be seen crossing the highway, or scudding over any exposed part of the snowy surface in the twilight, the owl would doubtless swoop down upon it. ”

“ We stop at the creaking of the bare boughs overhead as if some watchful creature were about to spring upon us; every stump and bush is an animal that we have startled into sudden fixedness; and out of every shadow we expect a live thing to rise up and withstand us. The hoot of the owl, the bark of the fox, the whinny of the coon, send shivers of excitement over us. We jump at a mouse in the leaves near by. ”

“ On moonlight evenings the tremulous, haunting cry of the screech-owl comes to your ears, always from far away, and if you walk through the chestnut grove aforesaid in the daytime you may chance to catch his faint, vibratory, tree-frog whistle. ”

“ That was my first encounter with the short-eared owl, a world- wandering species, known familiarly to the sportsman in England as the October or woodcock owl; an inhabitant of the whole of Europe, also of Asia, Africa, America, Australasia, and many Atlantic and Pacific islands. No other bird has so vast a range; yet nobody in the house could tell me anything about it, excepting that it was an owl, which I knew, and no such bird was found in our neighbourhood. Several months later I found out more about it, and this was when I began to ramble about the plain on my pony. ”

“ The great snowy mother owl loved them as only a mother owl knows how, almost wearing herself out to hunt food for them, both day and night. One day when the great snowy owl came back to the balsam pine she arrived just in time to see a sinuous, brown, fur-coated stranger hastily claw himself down from her nest, and dashing swiftly and angrily at him, she managed to clutch just a tuft of his brown fur. ”

“ Birds in the locality were quite numerous and some of them showed remarkable tameness. During the hours of night time, giving voice as it were to the weird lights and shadows around the house, we could hear the mournful ditty of a screech owl whose home was in a nearby hickory tree, while the first gray streak of each returning dawn was heralded by the sweet songs of the robins. ”

“ There is the long-eared owl, with his bent-in, short, hooked nose and funny feathered ears standing straight up. The little owls are balls of soft fluff, and are eagerly looking at the dead mouse that father owl has brought for them to eat. ”

“ Among these, the largest is the great eagle owl, which is found in Europe. Its home is among the deep recesses of mighty forests, and the clefts of rocks amidst the mountains. From its lonely retreat, where it reposes in silence during the day, it issues forth, as the dusk of evening throws a yet deeper gloom over the dark pine forest or rocky glen, to prowl in quest of prey. On silent wing it skims through the wood, and marks the fawn, the hare, or the rabbit nibbling the herbage. Suddenly wheeling, it sweeps upon the unsuspecting victim, and, if not too large, bears it off in its talons. ”

“ An owl was once prowling about, when he came across a bat. So he caught him in his claws, and was about to devour him. Upon this, the bat began to squeal terribly; and he said to the owl, "Pray, what do you take me for, that you use me thus?" 6. "Why, you are a bird, to be sure," said the owl, "and I am fond of birds. I love dearly to break their little bones." 7. "Well," said the bat, "I thought there was some mistake. I am no bird. Do n't you see, Mr. Owl, that I have no feathers, and that I am covered with hair like a mouse?" ”

“ An Owl, in her wisdom, counselled the Birds, when the acorn first began to sprout, to pull it up by all means out of the ground, and not to allow it to grow, because it would produce the mistletoe, from which an irremediable poison, the bird lime, would be extracted, by which they would be captured. The Owl next advised them to pluck up the seed of the flax, which men had sown, as it was a plant which boded no good to them. ”

“ The night-cry of these little creatures is difficult to distinguish from the love-call of the horned owl, who on the undark nights of summer skims the low foreshore for the sake of the field-mice and gophers that feed on the seeds of the beach grasses. ”

“ An owl makes the woods resound by night and early morning with his cries, which consist of a loud, double-initial note, and then a succession of lower descending notes. Another new bird, or at least new to me, makes the forests ring. ”

“ Of this point I have recently been more convinced than ever from the study of two living specimens of Owls—the Snowy Owl and the Short-eared Owl—which have been in my possession for some months. For instance, taking one out of the many positions indulged in by the first of these birds, what would my criticising friends have thought and said had I represented him as a round ball of white feathers, head hardly perceptible, feet entirely concealed, and squatting on the ground like a hen covering her chickens? ”

“ And peered for his dad, and said, "You're long
But he hooted for joy, when he presently saw
His sire, with a full-grown mouse in his claw.
Oh what a supper they had that night!
All was feasting and delight;
Who most can chatter, or cram, they strive,
They were the merriest owls alive. ”

“ Like alien gods who shun the world,
The flown owls wait with feathers furled;
Darting red eyes, they dream and muse.
In rows unmoving they remain
Till the sad hour that they remember,
When, treading down the sun's last ember,
The towering night resumes its reign. ”

“ THE OWL. This solemn looking bird is seldom to be seen by day. It is strictly a night bird. Its eyes are unable to endure the glare of sunshine, but are formed for seeing in the dim twilight, or in the soft radiance of the moon. There are at least eighty different species of owls. This picture resembles most nearly the Virginian Eagle Owl, an American bird. Our common barn-door owl has no tufts on its head. Some people are foolish and cruel enough to persecute owls, under the plea that they do mischief, destroy pigeon's eggs, etc. ”