Bird lore - Project Puffin

WHEN
Screech Owl Johnnie
By FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY
watching birds in northwestern Oregon in June*, just before
dayhght one morning, I began hearing queer httle Owl-like noises
from the garden, and that night at dusk, when they came again, I
went out to investigate. Tom, the big house-cat who had tried to catch a
Dusky Grouse who had brought her brood from the forest a few days before,
had also heard the calls, and with the keen ears of a hunter distinguished
them from the rest of the evening chorus and located them as coming from a
long trellis covered with a dense thorny mass of Himalaya blackberries in the
garden. Creeping up under the trellis he gave a tiger-like spring and mounted
the frame with the proud air of having already secured his prey. But no
prey was visible, and the briars reinforced my remarks so sentiently that he
reluctantly jumped down.
By this time it had grown so dusky that I could discover nothing, but
the keen-eyed fisherman of the family—we were near one of Oregon's famous
salmon bays— joined in the search and, leaning close over the vines, finally
exclaimed: "Here he is!" Even then I had to press on hard with my eyes, as
Mr. Burroughs puts it, to see anything but a tangle of white blooming sprays.
It was as baffling as a puzzle picture illustrating protective coloration, for the
vermiculated down covering the small Owl made him fairly melt into his back-
ground of white blooming vines. There he sat, however, with his plump, un-
mistakable Owl-like form and blackish markings around his eyes, looking as
calm as a king in the midst of his barricade of thorns. Wise mother! With
his perfect disguise and a thorn homa that would baffle a cat, she might well
have risked leaving him there alone through the day, though it were only a
few steps from the house.
As it was too dark even to see if he had ears, I suggested putting him in a
box until morning; but when the fisherman came with a gunnysack and a
stout stick, quite natural paraphernalia for one of his profession, I began to
weaken. Suppose the little fellow should get hurt! In frightened struggles
his delicate little wings and legs might easily suffer from passes of that bludgeon.
Then, if he were in a box all night, how could his parents feed him? In
the morning they would have gone to the woods.
With a belated idea I hurried to the house and, returning, raised my arm
high over the thorny sprays and flashed my electric torch over the Owlet until
his lemon-yellow eyes drooped before the light. A downy nestling indeed!
And, yes, there were tiny ear-tufts. Suggestions of a black facial disk, a light
band under the bill, and a vermiculated black-and-white body completed the
picture. Once more I raised the torch over his head to examine his potential
ear-tufts, but he sat stolid as a sphinx., making no move and uttering no re-
monstrance. I had seen his markings as well, much better than if I had
*I9I4.
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