For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle.
I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
autumn wind
through an open door –
a piercing cry
~ Basho
This bright moonlight night
an owl heard from my chamber —
a loud, piercing scream.
HDT ~ September 23, 1855
I catch a screech owl
make a small cage and keep it –
only for a night.
October 28, 1855
May 7. I observed a middling-sized red oak standing a little aslant on the side-hill over the swamp, with a pretty large hole in one side about fifteen feet from the ground where apparently a limb on which a felled tree lodged had been cut some years before and so broke out a cavity. I thought that such a hole was too good a one not to be improved by some inhabitant of the wood. Perhaps the gray squirrels I had just seen had their nest there. Or was not the entrance big enough to admit a screech owl? So I thought I would tap on it and put my ear to the trunk and see if I could hear anything stirring within it, but I heard nothing. Then I concluded to look into it. So I shinned up, and when I reached up one hand to the hole to pull myself up by it, the thought passed through my mind perhaps something may take hold my fingers, but nothing did. The first limb was nearly opposite to the hole, and, resting on this, I looked in, and, to my great surprise, there squatted, filling the hole, which was about six inches deep and five to six wide, a salmon - brown bird not so big as a partridge, seemingly asleep within three inches of the top and close to my face. It was a minute or two before made it out to be an owl. It was a salmon-brown or fawn (?) above, the feathers shafted with small blackish-brown somewhat hastate (?) marks, grayish toward the ends of the wings and tail, as far as I could see. A large white circular space about or behind eye, banded in rear by a pretty broad (one third of an inch) and quite conspicuous perpendicular dark brown stripe. Egret, say one and a quarter inches long, sharp, triangular, reddish-brown without mainly. It lay crowded in that small space, with its tail somewhat bent up and one side of its head turned up with one egret, and its large dark eye open only by a long slit about a sixteenth of an inch wide; visible breathing. After a little while I put in one hand and stroked it repeatedly, whereupon it reclined its head a little lower and closed its eye entirely. Though curious to know what was under it, I disturbed it no farther at that time. In the meanwhile, the crows were making a great cawing amid and over the pine - tops beyond the swamp, and at intervals I heard the scream of a hawk, probably the surviving male hen - hawk, whom they were pestering ( unless they had discovered the male screech owl ), and a part of them came cawing about me. This was a very fit place for hawks and owls to dwell in, the thick woods just over a white spruce swamp, in which the glaucous kalmia grows; the gray squirrels, partridges, hawks, and owls, all together. probably these screech owls which I heard in moonlight nights hereabouts last fall . . . Returning by owl's nest, about one hour before sunset, I climbed up and looked in again. The owl was gone, but there were four nearly round dirty brownish white? eggs, quite warm, on nothing but the bits of rotten wood which made the bottom of the hole.[MacGillivray describes no eggs of this color, - only white, and the same with Nuttall, except the great gray owl. [ Screech owl's eggs, when clean, are always white. ]]- The eggs were very nearly as large at one end as the other, slightly oblong, 13/8 inches by 12/8, as nearly as I could measure. I took out one. It would probably have hatched within a week, the young being considerably feathered and the bill remarkably developed. Perhaps she heard me coming, and so left the nest. My bird corresponds in color, as far as I saw it, with Wilson's Strix asio, but not his navia, which Nuttall and others consider a young (?) bird, though the egg was not pure white. I do not remember that my bird was barred or mottled at all. Nuttall says Little Screech - Owl: Greenland to Florida; chiefly prey on mice; also small birds, beetles, crickets, etc.; nest in May and June, and lined with etc. , etc. , eggs four to six; several bluebirds, black birds, and song sparrows in one. In cloudy weather come out earlier. Wilson's thrush attacked one. Note in autumn, “ho, ho ho ho ho ho ho, proceeding from high and clear to a low guttural shake or trill.” Was not that an owl's feather which I found half a mile beyond, downy more than half, and with base and separate white points beyond a dark band at the end ? Was not mine a bird of last year ? But MacGillvray says of owls that the young differ very little from the old; "the older the individual becomes, the more simple is the colouring,the dark markings diminish in extent, and the finer mottlings are gradually obliterated. ” May 7, 1855
May 12. As I approached the owl's nest I saw her run past the hole up into that part of the hollow above it, and probably she was there when I thought she had flown on the 7th. I looked in, and at first did not know what I saw. One of the three remaining eggs was hatched, and a little downy white young one, two or three times as long as an egg, lay helpless between the two remaining eggs. Also a dead white - bellied mouse (Mus leucopus) lay with them, its tail curled round one of the eggs. Wilson says of his red owl * (Strix asio), — with which this apparently corresponds and not with the mottled, though my egg is not " pure white, ” – that “ the young are at first covered with a whitish down . . . Just before sundown, took our seats before the owl's nest and sat perfectly still and awaited her appearance. We sat about half an hour, and it was surprising what various distinct sounds we heard there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets, — the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree - toad, the oven - bird, the yorrick of Wilson's thrush, a distant stake - driver, the night - warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, — not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests. May 12, 1855
May 25. Scared a screech owl out of an apple tree on hill; flew swiftly off at first like a pigeon woodpecker and lit near by facing me; was instantly visited and spied at by a brown thrasher; then flew into a hole high in a hickory near by, the thrasher following close to the tree. It was reddish or ferruginous. May 25 1855 See April 23, 1859 ("A large hickory by the wall on the north side (or northeast side) of the hill apparently just blown down, the one I saw the screech owl go into two or three years ago.")
May 26. At the screech owl's nest I now find two young slumbering, almost uniformly gray above, about five inches long with little dark-grayish tufts for incipient horns (?). Their heads about as broad as their bodies. I handle them without their stirring or opening their eyes. There are the feathers of a small bird and the leg of the Mus leucopus in the nest. May 26, 1855
June 2. Turning the island, I hear a very faint and slight screwing or working sound once, and suspect a screech owl, which I after see on an oak. I soon hear its mournful scream, probably to its mate, not loud now, but, though within twenty or thirty rods, sounding a mile off. I hear it louder from my bed in the night. June 2, 1860
June 10. The young owls are gone. June 10, 1855
June 25. Hear four or five screech owls on different sides of the river, uttering those peculiar low screwing or working, ventriloquial sounds. Probably young birds, some of them, lately taken flight. June 25, 1860
July 10. As I was bathing under the swamp white oaks at 6 P. M., heard a suppressed sound often repeated, like, perhaps, the working of beer through a bung-hole, which I already suspected to [be] produced by owls. I was uncertain whether it was far or near. Proceeding a dozen rods up-stream on the south side, toward where a catbird was incessantly mewing, I found myself suddenly within a rod of a gray screech owl sitting on an alder bough with horns erect, turning its head from side to side and up and down, and peering at me in that same ludicrously solemn and complacent way that I had noticed in one in captivity. Another, more red, also horned, repeated the same warning sound, or apparently call to its young, about the same distance off, in another direction, on an alder. When they took to flight they made some noise with their wings. With their short tails and squat figures they looked very clumsy, all head and shoulders. Hearing a fluttering under the alders, I drew near and found a young owl a third smaller than the old, all gray, without obvious horns, only four or five feet distant. It flitted along two rods, and I followed it. I saw at least two or more young. All this was close by that thick hemlock grove, and they perched on alders and an apple tree in the thicket there. These birds kept opening their eyes when I moved, as if to get clearer sight of me. The young were very quick to notice any motion of the old, and so betrayed their return by looking in that direction when they returned, though I had not heard it. Though they permitted me to come so near with so much noise, as if bereft of half their senses, they at [once] noticed the coming and going of the old birds, even when I did not. There were four or five owls in all. I have heard a somewhat similar note, further off and louder, in the night. July 10, 1856
August 14. I hear the tremulous squealing scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods, sounding somewhat like the neighing of a horse, not like the snipe. August 14, 1854
September 9. Within a week I think I have heard screech owls at evening from over the river once or twice. September 9, 1859
September 10. Hear screech owls and hooting owls these evenings. September 10, 1854
September 23. 8 P. M. - I hear from my chamber a screech owl about Monroe's house this bright moonlight night, a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt perchance, a rapid trill, then subdued or smothered a note or two. September 23, 1855
October 9. Heard two screech owls in the night. October 9,1851
October 28. As I paddle under the Hemlock bank this cloudy afternoon, about 3 o’clock, I see a screech owl sitting on the edge of a hollow hemlock stump about three feet high, at the base of a large hemlock. It sits with its head drawn in, eying me, with its eyes partly open, about twenty feet off. When it hears me move, it turns its head toward me, perhaps one eye only open, with its great glaring golden iris. You see two whitish triangular lines above the eyes meeting at the bill, with a sharp reddish-brown triangle between and a narrow curved line of black under each eye. At this distance and in this light, you see only a black spot where the eye is, and the question is whether the eyes are open or not. It sits on the lee side of the tree this raw and windy day. You would say that this was a bird without a neck. Its short bill, which rests upon its breast, scarcely projects at all, but in a state of rest the whole upper part of the bird from the wings is rounded off smoothly, excepting the horns, which stand up conspicuously or are slanted back. After watching it ten minutes from the boat, I land two rods above, and, stealing quietly up behind the hemlock, though from the windward, I look carefully around it, and, to my surprise, see the owl still sitting there. So I spring round quickly, with my arm outstretched, and catch it in my hand. It is so surprised that it offers no resistance at first, only glares at me in mute astonishment with eyes as big as saucers. But ere long it begins to snap its bill, making quite a noise, and, as I roll it up in my handkerchief and put it in my pocket, it bites my finger slightly. I soon take it out of my pocket and, tying the handkerchief, leave it on the bottom of the boat. So I carry it home and made a small cage in which to keep it, for a night. General color of the owl a rather pale and perhaps slightly reddish brown, the feathers centred with black. Perches with two claws above and two below the perch. It is a slight body, covered with a mass of soft and light-lying feathers. Its head muffled in a great hood. It must be quite comfortable in winter. Dropped a pellet of fur and bones in his cage. He sat, not really moping but trying to sleep, in a corner of his box all day, yet with one or both eyes slightly open all the while. Ordinarily stood rather than sat on his perch. I never once caught him with his eyes shut. October 28, 1855
October 29. P. M. — Up Assabet. Carried my owl to the hill again. Had to shake him out of the box, for he did not go of his own accord. (He had learned to alight on his perch, and it was surprising how lightly and noiselessly he would hop upon it.) There he stood on the grass, at first bewildered, with his horns pricked up and looking toward me. In this strong light the pupils of his eyes suddenly contracted and the iris expanded till they were two great brazen orbs with a centre spot merely. His attitude expressed astonishment more than anything. I was obliged to toss him up a little that he might feel his wings, and then he flapped away low and heavily to a hickory on the hillside twenty rods off. ( I had let him out in the plain just east of the hill. ) Thither I followed and tried to start him again. He was now on the qui vive, yet would not start. He erected his head, showing some neck, narrower than the round head above. His eyes were broad brazen rings around bullets of black. His horns stood quite an inch high, as not before. As I moved around him, he turned his head always toward me till he looked directly behind himself as he sat crosswise on a bough. He behaved as if bewildered and dazzled, gathering all the light he could and ever straining his great eyes toward [ you ] to make out who you are, but not inclining to fly . . . had to lift him again with a stick to make him fly, and then he only rose to a higher perch, where at last he seemed to seek the shelter of a thicker cluster of the sere leaves, partly crouching there. He never appeared so much alarmed as surprised and aston ished. When I first saw him yesterday, he sat on the edge of a hollow hemlock stump about three feet high, at the bottom of a large hemlock. amid the darkness of the evergreens that cloudy day. (It threatened to rain every moment.) At the bottom of the hollow or eighteen inches beneath him, was a very soft bed of the fine green moss ( hypnum ) which grows on the bank close by, probably his own bed. It had been recently put there. When I moved him in his cage he would cling to the perch, though it was in a perpendicular position, one foot above another, suggesting his habit of clinging to and climbing the inside of hollow trees. I do not remember any perpendicular line in his eyes, as in those of the cat. October 29, 1855
November 24. I hear a screech owl in Wheeler's wood by the railroad, and I heard one a few evenings ago at home. November 24, 1858
December 26. Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson,* - not at all gray. This is now generally made the same with the nævia ["spotted"], but, while some consider the red the old, others consider the red the young. This is, as Wilson says, a bright “nut brown" like a hazelnut or dried hazel bur (not hazel ). It is twenty-three inches alar extent by about eleven long. Feet extend one inch beyond tail. Cabot makes the old bird red; Audubon, the young. How well fitted these and other owls to withstand the winter! a mere core in the midst of such a muff of feathers! Then the feet of this are feathered finely to the claws, looking like the feet of a furry quadruped. Accordingly owls are common here in winter; hawks, scarce. December 26, 1860
February 5. Horace Mann brings me a screech owl, which was caught in Hastings's barn on the meeting - house avenue. It had killed a dove there. This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26, though it is about the same size, and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl. February 5, 1861
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Screech Owl
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026
* "The Red Owl of WILSON and other naturalists is merely the young of the bird called by the same authors the Mottled Owl, and which, in fact, is the adult of the [Little Screech Owl]." ~ J. J. Audubon
tinyurl.com/hdt-screechowl
