regaling himself upon those pulpy, fuzzy titbits. His coat of deep
cinnamon brown has a silky gloss and is very beautiful. His note or
call is not musical but loud, and has in a remarkable degree the
quality of remoteness and introvertedness. It is like a vocal
legend, and to the farmer bodes rain.

It is worthy of note, and illustrates some things said farther
back, that birds not strictly denominated songsters, but criers
like the cuckoo, have been quite as great favorites with the poets,
and have received as affectionate treatment at their hands, as have
the song-birds. One readily recalls Emerson's "Titmouse,"
Trowbridge's "Pewee," Celia Thaxter's "Sandpiper," and others of a
like character.

It is also worthy of note that the owl appears to be a greater
favorite with the poets than the proud, soaring hawk. The owl is
doubtless the more human and picturesque bird; then he belongs to
the night and its weird effects. Bird of the silent wing and
expansive eye, grimalkin in feathers, feline, mousing, haunting
ruins" and towers, and mocking the midnight stillness with thy
uncanny cry! The owl is the great bugaboo of the feathered tribes.
His appearance by day is hailed by shouts of alarm and derision
from nearly every bird that flies, from crows down to sparrows.
They swarm about him like flies, and literally mob him back into
his dusky retreat. Silence is as the breath of his nostrils to him,
and the uproar that greets him when he emerges into the open day
seems to alarm and confuse him as it does the pickpocket when
everybody cries Thief.

But the poets, I say, have not despised him:--