“We would better go in now,” said Gray Lady, after they had watched for a few moments. “The Owls are beginning to notice us, and I do not wish them to be driven away until I have had a chance to photograph them. Leave the box there, Tommy; with all this noise your Owl cannot be expected to come out before night.”
“But if they are good birds, what was the red one doing in Tommy’s pigeon-house?” asked Dave.
“Probably looking for mice or other vermin, or perhaps shelter,” said Gray Lady, “for though they sometimes eat large game, mice or smaller animals are easier food for a tribe of Owls that sometimes grow only six inches high and never to a foot in length. I will tell you a way to convince yourselves and make sure of what Owls feed upon without killing the Owls,” said Gray Lady, as, on their way up to the play and work rooms, they went into the library to look at some of the mounted birds in one of the cases.
“As Owls usually swallow their food whole, they take in bones, fur, feathers, etc., that they cannot digest; these portions are made up into little pellets called ‘Owl balls,’ and these are spit up before the real process of digestion is begun, and if you search under the trees where owls roost, you may often find these pellets for yourselves.”
“Maybe that is what these things are that I’ve found, for ever so many days, below the porch of the pigeon-house,” said Tommy, pulling a bunch of paper from his pocket; “I guess the Red Owl meant to live there this winter.” He spread out the paper before Gray Lady, who was now sitting at the table turning over the pages of a large book in red covers. It was a reference book, in two volumes, that she often used to look up stories of the birds about which the children asked. The name of the book was Life Histories of North American Birds, and they were written and collected by Major Bendire, who was both one of the Wise Men and an officer in our army. Putting in a mark at the page where Screech Owl began, she closed the book and looked at the contents of the paper.
“Yes, Tommy,” she said presently, “these are not only Owl balls, but there is the fur and bones of a mouse in each.” And deftly separating the wads with the point of a pair of scissors and taking out a tiny skull, she motioned the children to look at it through a reading-glass, each one in turn.
“Does the Screech Owl live everywhere in the United States?” asked Dave, after he and Tommy had picked out enough of the tiny bones from the fur to piece out the entire skeleton of a mouse.
“This same species of Screech Owl that we have here is found all through the eastern part of North America, but there is a Screech Owl, of some sort, to be found in the other parts of the country; thus, there is a Florida Screech Owl; one for California; another for the Rocky Mountains; one for Mexico, and one for Puget Sound, besides several others, and, of them all, the Rocky Mountain Owl is said to be the handsomest.
“We have several other owls that live hereabouts and do good work by killing rats, mice, snakes, lizards, etc. Of course, they also eat some birds, but they are so valuable to the farmer that he can ill spare them, and if he cannot, neither can we. Do you realize that it is really the farmer that holds the life of the country in his hand? What good would money and houses and clothes do us if we had no food?—and it is the farmer who, by carrying out the workings of nature, makes food possible.
“These birds of prey divide time between them, the Hawk works by day and the Owls at night and in the early dawn; thus, ‘Nature, in her wisdom, puts a continuous check upon the four-footed vermin of the ground.’