And if you are camping near and are new to the
woods, the chances are that you lie awake and shiver; for there is no
other sound like it in the wilderness. Sometimes, when you climb to
his nest, he has a terrifying _hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo_, running up
and down a deep guttural scale, like a fiendish laugh, accompanied by
a vicious snapping of the beak. And if you are a small boy, and it is
towards twilight, you climb down the tree quick and let his nest
alone. But the regular _whooo-hoo-hoo_, _whooo-hoo_, always five
notes, with the second two very short, is a hunting call, and he uses
it to alarm the game. That is queer hunting; but his ears account for
it.
If you separate the feathers on Kookooskoos' head, you will find an
enormous ear-opening running from above his eye halfway round his
face. And the ear within is so marvelously sensitive that it can hear
the rustle of a rat in the grass, or the scrape of a sparrow's toes on
a branch fifty feet away. So he sits on his watch tower, so still that
he is never noticed, and as twilight comes on, when he can see best,
he hoots suddenly and listens.
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