The youngsters were left severely alone until evening, when, with the lessening light, came a quick change. They seemed to lose some of their fear, and to be expectantly listening for something. Every now and then one would utter a rasping cry, which blended harmoniously with the insect chorus and yet could be heard a long distance.
Just as the sun set and the glow still spread over the west, the cries became very insistent, and a shadow seemed to pass for an instant over the coop as one of the parents flew quietly into a locust tree nearby, and stood there close to the trunk, a mouse dangling from the left foot. It soon flew out and circled noiselessly, only to disappear very soon, much to the disgust of the coop occupants. Several minutes elapsed, the evening silence broken only by the rasping call and the drum of the katy-dids; then an old Owl circled by bearing a mouse in its beak. It may have been the same bird and the same mouse, the deepening shadows making it impossible to see accurately.
The night being dark, I left my hiding-place and the birds until morning, when it was surprising to find only the smallest of the three in the coop, and that dead. The other two had escaped; but how they squeezed beneath slats which allowed only the tiniest chicks to go through will ever be a mystery to me. I could not even pull out the remaining one. It was much less developed than the other two, both in size of limb and feather, and had evidently succumbed to the effects of the frightful fall, though its body showed no bruise.
I hunted around the debris of the felled trees, and finally spied the others, which had done some expert climbing and hidden in the darkest corners, one beneath a tree trunk, the other in a leafy top where it had evidently stayed all night, as evidenced by a kind of bed stamped down and lined with surplus food carried there by the parents. Such a supper! three particularly fine meadow mice and a fat star-nosed mole, all freshly killed and whole.
The youngsters, which at first crouched silently, were in a very bitter frame of mind, so I carried them out by the wing tips—the only satisfactory way I found of handling such a brambly article—and later made them stand in the light for a photograph—a difficult matter, because they ran with all speed for the wood-pile as soon as released. Just as I thought I had them, after many attempts, one mistook the other for a foe, and, without preliminaries, went for him. However, the other one met the rush feet first and seized the attacking claws before they hit, practically holding down his brother by each foot while he glared into his face in comical fashion, and hissed for all he was worth. This holding hands continued with much comical shaking of heads, until both birds suddenly struck at each other somewhat as roosters do; then they held hands again until separated and put into a deep open-top box for safe-keeping. If left free, dogs, cats, or opossums would most likely have found them through the strong odor so noticeable about young birds of prey. The mice were, however, first cut into pieces and thrust down the apparently hungry birds’ throats, while each was held by his feet and neck.
Every night after that the youngsters were visited and fed by the devoted old ones, and always it was with mice of some kind or moles—principally meadow mice, house mice, white-footed mice, shrews and ground moles—as many as eight sometimes, as shown by the disgorged pellets or uneaten bodies.
The parents also scrupulously cleaned the old box each night. They lived in the hemlock wood across the narrow valley, but in what tree I could not discover. One would appear soon after sunset with some kind of mouse, and by eleven o’clock had apparently satisfied the youngsters’ hunger, for the rasping cries would usually cease and an occasional louder and clearer cry of the old birds pierce the darkness.
One fine morning found the youngsters gone. Day after day they had tried to jump out of the box, each time coming a little closer to the edge. After this they could be heard calling in the evenings, and sometimes until dawn. Always in the wood, they perched high up side by side or on nearby limbs, and lazily relied on their parents to keep up the good work of providing mice. On dark nights they called much longer than on moonlight nights, which convinced me that the hunting was more difficult then.
Occasionally a parent could be seen standing always very erect on the barn gable overlooking a truck-garden, but usually it would watch from a tree in the marshy meadows, now and then dropping to the ground and staying there a considerable time as if hunting on foot among the grass clumps, a method which, from the great agility of the young when pursued on the ground and in the brush piles, I can well imagine no cat could improve on.
I tried without success to draw them by imitating their strange cry, and also a mouse’s squeak made by sucking loudly on the back of the hand. A Screech Owl and many wild animals would take instant notice of the latter, but not the Barn Owls. Even a rat caught in a trap failed to entice these birds, though several Screech Owls responded at once.