ling chips did
not disturb him at all. When I reached in a stick and pulled him over on
his side, leaving one of his wings spread out, he made no attempt to
recover himself, but lay among the chips and fragments of decayed wood,
like a part of themselves. Indeed, it took a sharp eye to distinguish
him. Not till I had pulled him forth by one wing, rather rudely, did he
abandon his trick of simulated sleep or death. Then, like a detected
pickpocket, he was suddenly transformed into another creature. His eyes
flew wide open, his talons clutched my finger, his ears were depressed,
and every motion and look said, "Hands off, at your peril." Finding this
game did not work, he soon began to "play possum" again. I put a cover
over my study wood-box and kept him captive for a week. Look in upon him
at any time, night or day, and he was apparently wrapped in the
profoundest slumber; but the live mice which I put into his box from
time to time found his sleep was easily broken; there would be a sudden
rustle in the box, a faint squeak, and then silence. After a week of
captivity I gave him his freedom in the full sunshine; no trouble for
him to see which way and where to go.

Just at dusk in the winter nights, I often hear his soft _bur-r-r-r_,
very pleasing and bell-like. What a furtive, woody sound it is in the
winter stillness, so unlike the harsh scream of the hawk! But all the
ways of the owl are ways of softness and duskiness. His wings are shod
with silence, his plumage is edged with down.

Another owl neighbor of mine, with whom I pass the time of day more
frequently than with the last, lives farther away. I pass his castle
every night on my way to the post-office, and in winter, if the hour is
late enough, am pretty sure to see him standing in his doorway,
surveying the passers-by and the landscape through narrow slits in his
eyes. For four successive winters now have I observed him. As the
twilight begins to deepen, he rises up out of his cavity in the
apple-tree, scarcely faster than the moon rises from behind the hill,
and sits in the opening, completely framed by its outlines of gray bark
and dead wood, and by his protective coloring virtually invisible to
every eye that does not know he is there. Probably my own is the only
eye that has ever penetrated his secret, and mine never would have done
so had I not chanced on one occasion to see him leave his retreat and
make a raid upon a shrike that was impaling a shrew-m