OWLS. 345 



nest in the crotch of a tree, as Richardson's owl is said to do. Mr. W. Perham, at 

 Tyngsboro, Mass., has been quite successful in taking eggs of this bird by hanging up 

 in the woods breeding-places made of sections of hollow trunks, with the ends boarded 

 up, and entrance-holes cut in the sides. In this way he has taken many nests of mottled 

 owls, and occasionally one of the present species breeds in the artificial nest. 



Mr. William Brewster, who has published the above facts, has also given his own 

 experience with some of the young birds, furnished him by Mr. Perham which he 

 kept alive for some months. He says they ate all kinds of meat with avidity, but 

 seemed especially fond of mice. " The latter were invariably skinned, and the flesh 

 torn in shreds and devoured, the skins being swallowed afterwards as dessert. I often 

 saw them eject those peculiar pellets of bones, fur, and other indigestible fragments 

 which all owls and many hawks are in the habit of depositing about their haunts. 

 The operation was a peculiar one. The owl would gape several times, then the head 

 would be violently shaken sideways, and, finally, the pellet, coated with mucus, would 

 shoot forth, frequently falling several inches in front of the spot where the bird was 

 sitting." These young birds were taken from the nest about the 15th of May, and 

 three of them Avere ' prepared' while in the ' alfoifrons* stage, and the remaining one 

 had assumed the perfect plumage of the adult acadica by September 1. 



The last group of the sub-family Striginae which we shall mention is the genus 

 Syrnium,) in which the facial disk reaches its highest development, and the species, as 

 a whole, are quite nocturnal. The skull is quite symmetrical, and the species of 

 which there are from fifteen to thirty, inhabiting all parts of the world except Aus- 

 tralia, Malaysia, and Oceanica are of large size. 



The type of the genus, and also of the sub-family, is Syrnium aluco, the well- 

 known brown or tawny owl of Europe, formerly one of the commonest birds of prcv 

 in Great Britain, but now far less abundant. It is a large bird, measuring eighteen 

 or twenty inches in length, and is noted for its almost insatiable appetite and the con- 

 sequent havoc it makes among small mammals and birds. It usually nests in hollow 

 trees, but several authentic instances are on record of its breeding in rabbit-burrows. 

 One of the more recent of these cases (1879) occurred in Kilmory, Lochgilphead, 

 Scotland, and Professor Newton remarks that it may have been due to the paucity in 

 that neighborhood of hard-wood trees of sufficient age and size to furnish holes or 



~ ~ 



hollow trunks, and that the habit may be in process of becoming hereditary. 



The barred owl, S. nebuloswn, of North America is of about the same size as the 

 brown owl, and is an abundant bird in wooded regions of the eastern United States, 

 being very abundant in the Gulf States, and especially in Florida and Louisiana. It 

 usually nests in hollow trees, but not unfrequently, especially in the northern States, 

 in the old nest of a hawk or other large bird. 



One of the largest and finest birds of prey, and a fitting one with which to close 

 our account of the Strigina?, is the great gray-owl, Syrniuni. clncrcnm, an extremely 

 rare winter visitor to the northern United States, probably only resident within our 

 borders in Washington Territory. It is one of the species common to the northern 

 parts of both hemispheres, and the American race differs only in darker colors from 

 S. lapponicum of North Europe and Asia, figured on page 335. 



This magnificent bird measures from twenty-eight to thirty inches in length, and 

 its color is dark brown above, with whitish mottling on every feather ; and below, 

 grayish white, the breast streaked, and the abdomen finely barred with deep brown. 

 In the northern parts of the continent it is rather abundant, and, although fitted for 



