When the Owl is discovered in his hiding-place, the alarm is given, and there is a general excitement among the small birds. They assemble in great numbers, and with loud chattering commence assailing and annoying him in various ways, and soon drive him out of his retreat. The Jay, usually his first assailant, like a thief employed as a thief-taker, attacks him with great zeal and animation; the Chickadee, the Nuthatch, and the small Thrushes peck at his head and eyes; while other birds, less bold, fly round him, and by their vociferation encourage his assailants and help to terrify their victim.
It is while sitting on the branch of a tree or on a fence, after his misfortune and his escape, that he is most frequently seen in the daytime; and here he has formed a subject for painters, who have commonly introduced him into their pictures as he appears in one of these open situations. He is likewise represented ensconced in his own select retreats, apparently peeping out of his hiding-place while half-concealed; and the fact of his being seen in these lonely places has caused many superstitions to be attached to his image. His voice is supposed to bode misfortune, and his spectral visits are regarded as the forewarnings of death. His connection with deserted houses and ruins has invested him with a peculiarly romantic character; while the poets, by introducing him to deepen the force of their gloomy and pathetic descriptions, have enlivened these associations; and he deserves, therefore, in a special degree, to be named among those animals which we call picturesque.
The gravity of the Owl's general appearance, combined with a sort of human expression in his countenance, undoubtedly caused him to be selected by the ancients as the emblem of wisdom. The moderns have practically renounced this idea, which had no foundation in the real character of the bird, who possesses only the sly and sinister traits that mark the feline race. A very different train of associations and a new series of picturesque images are now suggested by the figure of the Owl, who has been portrayed more correctly by modern poetry than by ancient mythology. He is now universally regarded as the emblem of ruin and desolation, true to his character and habits, which are intimately allied to this description of scenery.
I will not enter into a speculation concerning the nature and origin of those agreeable emotions which are so generally produced by the sight of objects that suggest the ideas of decay and desolation. It is happy for us, that, by the alchemy of poetry, we are able to turn some of our misfortunes into sources of melancholy pleasure, after the poignancy of grief has been assuaged by time. Nature has beneficently provided, also, that many an object, which is capable of communicating no direct pleasure to our senses, shall affect us agreeably through the medium of sentiment. The image of the Owl is calculated to awaken the sentiment of ruin, and to this feeling of the human soul we may trace the pleasure we derive from the sight of this bird in his appropriate scenery. Two Doves upon the mossy branch of a tree in a wild and beautiful sylvan retreat are the pleasing emblems of innocent love and constancy; but they are not more suggestive of poetic fancies than an Owl sitting upon an old gate-post near a deserted house.
I have alluded, in another page, to the faint sounds we hear when the Night Birds, on a still summer evening, are flying over short distances in a neighboring wood. There is a feeling of mystery excited by these sounds, that exalts the pleasure we derive from the delightful influence of the hour and the season. But the emotions thus produced are of a cheerful kind, and not equal in intensity to the effects of the scarcely perceptible sound occasioned by the flight of the Owl, as he glides by in the dusk of the evening or in the dim light of the moon. Similar in its influence is the dismal voice of this bird, which is harmonized with darkness, and, though in some cases not unmusical, is tuned, as it were, to the terrors of that hour when he makes secret warfare upon the sleeping inhabitants of the wood.
One of the most interesting of this tribe of birds is the little Acadian Owl, (Strix Acadica,) whose note has formerly excited a great deal of curiosity. In "The Canadian Naturalist," an account is given of a rural excursion in April, in the course of which the attention of one of the party is called by his companion, just after sunset, to a peculiar sound proceeding from a cedar swamp. It was compared to the measured tinkling of a cow-bell, or regular strokes upon a piece of iron, quickly repeated. The one appealed to is able to give no satisfactory information about it, but remarks, that, "during the months of April and May, and in the former part of June, we frequently hear, after nightfall, the sound just described. From its regularity, it is thought to resemble the whetting of a saw, and hence the bird from which it proceeds is called the Saw-Whetter." The author could not identify the bird that uttered this note, but conjectured that it might be a Heron or a Bittern. It has since been ascertained that this singular note proceeds from the Acadian Owl. It is like the sound produced by the filing of a mill-saw, and is said to be the amatory note of the male, being heard only during the season of incubation.
Mr. S.P. Fowler, of Danvers, informs me that "the Acadian Owl has another note, which we frequently hear in the autumn, after the breeding season is over. The parent birds, then accompanied by their young, while hunting their prey during a bright moonlight night, utter a peculiar note, resembling a suppressed moan or a low whistle. The little Acadian, to avoid the annoyance of the birds he would meet by day, and the blinding light of the sun, retires in the morning, his feathers wet with dew and rumpled by the hard struggles he has encountered in seizing his prey, to the gloom of the forest or the thick swamp, where, perched on a bough, near the trunk of the tree, he sleeps through a summer's day, the perfect picture of a used-up little fellow, suffering from the sad effects of a night's carouse. But he is an honest bird, notwithstanding his late hours and his idle sleeping days; he is also domestic in his habits, and the father of an interesting family, close at hand, in a hollow white-birch, and he is ever ready to give them his support and protection."
The Mottled Owl, (Strix Asio) or Screech Owl, is somewhat larger than the Acadian or Whetsaw, and not so familiar as the Barn Owl of Europe, though resembling it in general habits. He commonly builds in the hollow of an old tree, also in deserted buildings, whither he resorts in the daytime to find repose and to escape annoyance. His voice is heard most frequently in the latter part of summer, when the young Owlets are abroad, and use their cries for purposes of mutual salutation and recognition. This wailing note is singularly wild, and not unmusical. It is not properly a screech or a scream, like that of the Hawk or the Peacock, but rather a sort of moaning melody, half music and half bewailment. This wailing song is far from disagreeable, though it has a cadence which is expressive of dreariness and melancholy. It might be performed on a small flute, by commencing with D octave and running down by semitones to a fifth below, and frequently repeating the notes, for the space of a minute, with occasional pauses and slight variations, sometimes ascending as well as descending the scale. The bird does not slur the passages, but utters them with a sort of trembling staccato. The separate notes may be distinctly perceived, with intervals of about a semitone.
The Owl is not properly regarded as a useful bird. The generality of the tribe deserve to be considered only as mischievous birds of prey, and no more entitled to mercy and protection than the Falcons, to which they are allied. All the little Owls, however, though guilty of destroying small birds, are very serviceable in ridding our fields and premises of mischievous animals. They likewise destroy multitudes of large nocturnal insects, flying above the summits of the trees in pursuit of them, while at other times their flight is low, when watching for the small animals that run upon the ground. It is probably on account of its low flight that the Owl is seldom seen on the wing. Bats, which are employed by Nature for the same kind of services, fall victims in large numbers to the Owls of different species, who are the principal means of preventing their multiplication.
I should wander from my present purpose, were I to attempt a sketch of the large Owls, as I design only to treat of those birds which contribute, either as poetic or picturesque objects, to improve the charms of Nature. I shall say but a passing word, therefore, of the Great Snowy Owl, almost exclusively an inhabitant of the Arctic regions, where he frightens both man and beast with his dismal hootings,—or of the Cat Owl, the prince of these monsters, who should be consecrated to Pluto,—or of his brother monster, the Gray Owl, that will carry off a full-grown rabbit. There are several other species, more or less interesting, ridiculous, or frightful. I will leave them, to speak of birds of more pleasing habits and a more innocent character.