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Richardson in North America. The other twenty-five birds consist, firstly, of a hawk, curiously intermediate in structure between a Buzzard and the American group of carrion-feeding Polybori; and with these latter birds it agrees most closely in every habit and even tone of voice. Secondly there are two owls, representing the short-eared and white barn-owls of Europe.
Only the short-eared owl, with his wonderful eyes, beheld Pharaoh make his final rush; watched that living spring sprung quick as light, shooting out straight at the cat's glaring eyes, and saw greatest miracle of all the lot Pharaoh dodge his head aside in the twentieth of a second, and blink, letting the blow that spelt death whiz by.
Wild geese, curlews, and wimbrels with sharp, snipe-like beaks, are shot occasionally by the farmers. A few woodcocks, snipe, and wildfowl also visit us. In the winter the short-eared owls come; they are rarer than their long-eared relatives, who stay with us all the year. The common barn owl, of a white, creamy colour, is the screech owl that we hear on summer nights.
Among these are the golden eagle, the white-headed or sea eagle, the osprey, the peregrine falcon, the gyrfalcon, the merlin goshawk, the common buzzard, rough-legged buzzard, hen-harrier, long-eared owl, short-eared owl, great snowy owl, and Tengmalm's owl.
The thrush's heart gave a great jump, and seemed threatening to choke him, for that shape and it howled at him suddenly, in a voice calculated to make strong men jump was death of the night, otherwise a short-eared owl.
A little short-eared, stubby-tailed Boston terrier was running back and forth on the sand, anxiously. Anne was a tender-hearted lover of animals, and his apparent distress appealed to her. "I'll go down and see what's the matter with him," she decided, thrusting her feet into her slippers and tying the ribbons of her pink dressing-gown.
Just as the countryfolk regard the wryneck as leader of the wandering cuckoos, and the short-eared owl as forerunner of the woodcocks, so the ancients held that the landrail performed the same service of pioneer to the quail on its long journeys over land and sea.
This happens on the pampas with the stork, the short-eared owl, the hooded gull and the dominican or black-backed gull the leading species among the feathered nomads: a few first appear like harbingers; these are presently joined by new comers in considerable numbers, and before long they are in myriads.
Long-haired, rough-haired, long-eared, short-eared, brush-tailed, smooth-tailed, long-legged, short-legged, black-eyed, black-nosed; white, brown, black, tan, sandy, mixed; every degree of pure or mongrel blood; terriers of all kinds swarm around us, playing all sorts of antics, evincing all kinds of impertinences, catching all sorts of vermin, and presenting themselves to us in every shape of beauty or ugliness, of which their race is capable.
At Beth-Seân she had heard him speak to dumb beasts, and never doubted but that they answered him. At Dan she had seen a short-eared hare rush to him for refuge, and follow him afterwards as a dog might do. At Kinnereth he had called to a lark that from a tree-top was pouring its heart out to the morning, and the lark had fluttered down and nestled in his hand.
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