The white Owls are very scarce, but I saw a great many of them that year. Summer was very late, and they had flown around the Arctic Circle until they got dizzy and had come down to chase each other around the larger meridians. In the Winter, they get their living by fishing. I have often seen a big white Owl, sailing around on a cake of ice which perfectly matched his plumage, taking his ease like any fisherman in a rowboat.
They are very clever with their claws and will bait their hooks with Worms and Frogs which they have caught in the Summer and kept on ice until they were ready to use them. It is a charming sight to see a white Owl bait his hook, toss his line overboard, and wait, with sublime patience, until there is a nibble at the other end. You can almost hear his wild eerie laughter as he draws in his catch and eats it, bones and all, without stopping to cook it.
One Winter when some fishermen spilled a cargo of dead Fish overboard, the beach was so thick with white Owls that you could not see the sand. They used nets and gathered in the Fish by wholesale, though sometimes an Owl would sail out over the water like a Seagull, catch up a Fish in his claws, and come back, laughing, amidst the plaudits of his companions who were waiting in a row upon the shore. No other observer has seen this on so large a scale as I have, according to the books, but I have a photograph of the beach and of one of the Owls, which I shall be glad to show to the doubting ones.
Once, while I was shooting Ducks, I had a strange experience. My decoy was a lady Duck with a string tied around her leg. I had fastened the other end to my boat anchor to restrain her natural wandering propensities. She was sailing around on the cold water, protesting at her unhappy plight, when a big white Owl heard her profane remarks.
He sat on a dead branch and giggled for a while, then began to make fun of her. At this her composure vanished and she began to sob, so he rushed to her, on his big, perfectly silent wings, lifted her up, gently and tenderly, with one great claw, poising her body meanwhile against his wing, and with the file on the inside of his other leg, deliberately filed away my string and gave her her freedom.