GREAT HORNED OWL 307 



weasels, large and small skunks, woodchucks, opossums, porcupines, 

 domestic cats, shrews, and bats. Most of the records indicate that 

 the cottontail rabbit is the most prominent item. Sometimes tracks 

 in the newly fallen snow tell the story of the owl's hunting. Lewis 

 O. Shelley describes it graphically in his notes as follows: "Here on a 

 moonlight night of February, in an open glen away from the dark 

 conifers and near the swamp, several rabbits meet to sport and play, 

 and can be heard squealing, as they hop about and follow their paths 

 at breakneck speed. As their play goes on, a shadow sweeps from 

 the darkness of the hemlocks. And all the rabbits scatter, unmindful 

 of their paths, or freeze in their tracks, their eyes wide, their hearts 

 pounding. By daylight there will be this maze of tracks outside the 

 beaten paths, where a rabbit has darted here and there without co- 

 herent thought of destination. At last you find where the tracks end 

 in a circular arena. No tracks lead there save the rabbit's; none 

 lead away. There are bits of fur, to be sure, but that is all. Yet 

 you know that Bubo, the great horned owl, has dined to the full, 

 back in the seclusion of the conifers; and Bubo leaves no tracks, only 

 bits of fur and sometimes drops of blood." 



The great horned owl's nest often smells strongly of skunk, and the 

 birds themselves often retain this pungent odor long after they have 

 been made into museum specimens. G. Norman Wilkinson (1913) 

 relates the following: 



One morning, late in the autumn, I was driving through the woods, when I 

 heard a disturbance in the dry leaves at a little distance from the road. * * * 

 As I drew near, I saw clearly the cause of the disturbance. A few feet in front of 

 me was a large Horned Owl in a sort of sitting posture. His back and head were 

 against an old log. His feet were thrust forward, and firmly grasped a full-grown 

 skunk. One foot had hold of the skunk's neck and the other clutched it tightly 

 by the middle of the back. The animal seemed to be nearly dead, but still had 

 strength enough to leap occasionally into the air, in its endeavors to shake off its 

 captor. During the struggle, the Owl's eyes would fairly blaze, and he would 

 snap his beak with a noise like the clapping of your hands. Neither the bird 

 nor his victim paid the slightest attention to me, though I stood quite close. 

 How long since the Owl had secured the death grip I do not know, but there was 

 no doubt about his having it. The skunk could no more free itself from the 

 Owl's claws than it could have done from the jaws of a steel trap. Its struggles 

 grew less and less frequent and at the end of about fifteen minutes they ceased 

 altogether. 



At least three cases have been reported of a horned owl tackling a 

 domestic cat. In one case, the owl found that it had "caught a 

 Tartar," for the cat put up a stiff fight and had to be dropped. Oliver 

 L. Austin, Jr. (1932), tells of a more successful attempt: 



I flushed a Great Horned Owl, which fluttered up in front of my car and flew 

 laboriously down the road. The headlights showed it to be carrying something 

 heavy, something which it could not lift two feet off the ground. I gave chase, 

 and the bird dropped clumsily a hundred yards farther on, to crouch defensively 



