One Day In The Plant's Blossoming Time, I Was Slowly Walking My Pony Through The Dark Bottle-Green Tufts, When A Big Yellowish-Tawny Owl Got Up A Yard Or So From The Hoofs, And I Instantly Recognized It As The Same Sort Of Bird As Our Mysterious Pigeon-Killer.

And there on the ground where it had been was its nest, just a slight depression with a few dry bents by way of lining and five round white eggs.

From that time I was a frequent visitor to the owls, and for three summers they bred at the same spot in spite of the anxiety they suffered on my account, and I saw and grew familiar with their quaint-looking young, clothed in white down and with long narrow pointed heads more like the heads of aquatic birds than of round-headed flat-faced owls.

Later, I became even better acquainted with the short-eared owl. A year or several years would sometimes pass without one being seen, then all at once they would come in numbers, and this was always when there had been a great increase in field mice and other small rodents, and the owl population all over the country had in some mysterious way become aware of the abundance and had come to get their share of it. At these times you could see the owls abroad in the late afternoon, before sunset, in quest of prey, quartering the ground like harriers, and dropping suddenly into the grass at intervals, while at dark the air resounded with their solemn hooting, a sound as of a deep-voiced mastiff baying at a great distance.

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