For Emergo

Well as Hitchcock says in the trailer, "An owl here....a crow there..."

And NY Times critic Bosley Crowther ended his generally positive 1960 review of Psycho with the sentence: "My one disappointment is that in his parlor, Perkins has no significant bats."

Crowther's point was well taken, but wrong(and I know, he was joking, too.) Crowther was suggesting that without a bat in the room, Psycho missed out on being a Dracula-like Universal horror movie. But as Hitchcock would say, "that was the point" -- he wanted Psycho to have SOME of the feel of a horror movie, but to drop the cliché elements. No Bats. No spider webs. No scene of Marion Crane's car breaking down at the Bates Motel. Etc.

The sensitive issue here -- taken up in the writings of other people -- is how Norman strokes that bird while he talks to Marion. There very well could be a sexual connotation, but as with much else in "Psycho," Hitchocck is too sophisticated to hit us over the head with the idea.

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In his interview with Truffaut, Hitchcock elaborated on the wall full of dead birds in a manner far more analytical than Hitchocck usually was willing to go. I'm paraphrasing here that Hitchocck said: "There were like symbols really. Owls are night birds and they are always watching. Perkins can see his guilt reflected in their watching eyes."

Also: the stuffed birds don't get much screen time in Psycho. They dominate the Marion/Norman parlor scene, but they return only when Arbogast goes in there alone later. Hitchcock lingers on Arbogast looking at the birds with some interest, as if the detective finds these birds disturbing in some way. Hitchcock is also, however, clocking enough time with Arbogast so that Norman can run up the hill and get dressed to kill. Arbogast.

I can't recall how visible the birds are when Sam follows Norman into the parlor and they fight.

One more thing: in Hitchcock's 1952 film "I Confess," priest Montgomery Clift is on the witness stand in a murder trial(he's the defendant.) Hitchcock cuts to a low angle that matches Norman and the owl in Psycho. Except this time, its Monty and Christ on the Cross. So Hitchocck was working from memory when he staged the parlor scene in Psycho.