Since fate so planned,
I’ll not decline
To be for life
Your valentine.”
—Florence A. Van Sant, in Bird-Lore.
“Are any of these other Owls here useful?” asked Sarah, who had been looking at the birds in the glass case while Gray Lady talked. “This great big one with feather horns looks as if he could eat a little lamb or a big rooster if he tried.”
“That is the Great Horned Owl,” said Gray Lady, “and fortunately he is very uncommon here in New England, for he is a cruel and wasteful bird, unsociable and sulky, killing chickens, and even turkeys and geese, and often merely eating the head of its victim and then killing again; it is the worst of all the birds of prey, and no excuse can be found for its behaviour.
“The Barred Owl on the shelf beside the Great Horned, though having a smooth head, is sometimes mistaken for the fierce Owl and shot for its sins. Aside from sometimes killing birds, it is a useful Owl, eating mice, rabbits, red squirrels, etc. This is a remote, lonely sort of an Owl, with a dismal hoot, as one man described it: ‘Hoo-ooo-ooo-ho-ho-ho-too-too-to-to!’ sometimes interspersed by a laugh and then a wail. I disturbed a young bird once, causing one of its parents great uneasiness. It is impossible to describe all the notes uttered by it at this time; they were rendered in a subdued muttering and complaining strain, parts of which sounded exactly like ‘old-fool, old-fool, don’t do it, don’t do it!’
“There are two other owls that are very useful; one is found all through the United States, and the other is a more southern species, found usually south of New England. The first is the Short-eared or Marsh Owl, and the other is the Barn Owl.
“All Owls, in a way, look very much alike, in spite of difference in colour and size. They have round, feathered heads, which they are obliged to turn around when they wish to look, as their eyes are so fixed in their sockets that they cannot roll them as other birds and animals do; some have feather horns and some do not. They all have talons, either covered by scales or feathers, with which they seize their food, which they swallow whole. But between the Barn Owl and his kin, the Horned, Hoot, and Screech Owls, there is a striking contrast.