8 4 THE CONDOR [ VoL. viii whether he is a bird, man or beast. However, I have often watched the barn owl and studied his habits till I was satisfied he paid our neighbor more in one night than the pigeons, swallows and wrens did in a month. Not in singing; mercy no! Who ever heard of a song coming from a hooked bill? It was in real service about the farm, the service of a watchman or policeman, to rid the place of injurious rode n ts. It was not an easy matter to picture these barn owls, situated as they were in the very peak of the old barn. The minute we approached the nest box, the old owl pitched headlong out of the hole and landed in a willow tree opposite. We had to climb a ladder and swing into the rafters to reach the nest. In such a place, we could hardly handle a camera. There was not even a loft to work from, so we se- cured a long ladder and nailed a couple of cross-pieces strong enough to hold a board. Crawling up in a stooped position, we took the back out of the nest box and arranged so it would drop down and show the interior or could be fastened up, at will. BARN OWLS ABOUT 24 DAYS OLD A month later, we climbed up in the gable end of the barn and pulled out three of the funniest, fuzzlest monkey-faced little brats that it has ever been my privil- ege to set eyes upon. They blinked, snapped their bills and hissed like a box- ful of snakes. We took them to the ground and doubled up in laughter at their queer antics. They bobbed and screwed around in more funny attitudes in a min- ute than any contortionist I ever saw. We found them graded in size and height as carefully as a carpenter builds the steps of a stair case. They were such lumpy looking birds It looked as if some amateur taxidermist had taken them in hand and rammed the cotton in, wad at a time with a stick, till he had the youngsters bulging out in knobs all over. The eldest we called the colonel, but looking at him from a humanized stand- point, it seems to me he had been put together wrong, for his chest had slipped clear around on his back. At times he was a peaceable-looking citizen, but he was always wary and suspicious. He turned his back on the camera in disgust,
