. Birds of America;. Birds -- North America. OWLS 99 Some years ago, 1 had a gcjod o])|)()riuiiity to make an intimate study of a I'arn (Jwl family. They had a nest in the gable end of my neigh- bor's barn and occupiecl it for a nunil)er of years. This year they had three young, and at three weeks old they were the funniest, fuzziest, " monkey-faced " little creatures 1 had ever seen. They blinked, snapped their bills, and hissed like a box full of snakes. They bobbed and screwed around in more funny attitudes than any con- tortionist you ever saw. We crept out one night and hid in a
. Birds of America;. Birds -- North America. OWLS 99 Some years ago, 1 had a gcjod o])|)()riuiiity to make an intimate study of a I'arn (Jwl family. They had a nest in the gable end of my neigh- bor's barn and occupiecl it for a nunil)er of years. This year they had three young, and at three weeks old they were the funniest, fuzziest, " monkey-faced " little creatures 1 had ever seen. They blinked, snapped their bills, and hissed like a box full of snakes. They bobbed and screwed around in more funny attitudes than any con- tortionist you ever saw. We crept out one night and hid in a brush heap by the barn. Before long the scratching and soft hissing of the young Owls told us that their breakfast time had come. The curtain of the night had fallen. The day creatures were at rest. Suddenly a shadow flared across the dim-lit sky. The young Owls in some way knew of the approach of food, for there was a sudden out- burst in the nest box like the whistle of escaping steam. .Vgain and again the shadow came and went. Then 1 crept into the barn, felt m\' way up and edged along the rafters to the old box. As soon as food was brought, I lit a match and saw one of the half-grown young tearing the head from the body of a young gopher. Barn Owls are always hungry. They will eat their own weight in food every night, and more, if they can get it. To supply such ravenous children, their parents ransack the gardens, fields and orchards industriously night after night and catch as many mice, gophers, and other ground creatures as a dozen cats. For this reason, it would be difficult to find birds that are more use- ful about any farming community. Yet many times people kill these Owls through ignorance of their value or from idle curiosity. A case is on record where a half-grown Barn Owl was given all the mice it could eat. It swallowed eight, one after another and the ninth followed all but the tail, which for a long time hung out of the bird's mouth. In three hours, this sa
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookidbirdsofameri, bookyear1923
