154 BULLETIN 17 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



spring of 1933, we found it to be common. The birds appeared to 

 confine themselves to a stretch of territory extending 6 or 7 miles 

 along a small stream bordered with a mixed growth of the kind already 

 mentioned, and within this area a number of pairs of the long-eared 

 owl were nesting." 



Probably this owl is much commoner than is generally supposed, 

 especially in the East, where it finds such effective concealment in 

 dense coniferous thickets. The long-eared owl is more strictly 

 nocturnal in its habits than some of our other owls; it spends the day 

 well hidden in the densest cover it can find and seldom moves about 

 unless disturbed; for this reason it is seldom seen and may be common 

 where its presence is not suspected. Its protective coloration and its 

 effective hiding pose make it difficult to recognize and easy to overlook. 

 It is more conspicuous and so seems more abundant in the deciduous 

 trees of the West, especially in winter. 



Nesting. — The long-eared owl is a rare breeder in eastern Massa- 

 chusetts ; many good ornithologists have never seen its nest ; however, 

 I have been fortunate enough to have seen seven nests of four different 

 pairs of owls. My first nest was found on May 15, 1910, in Kehoboth. 

 It was a small, insignificant nest about 20 feet up in a pitch pine in a 

 patch of swampy, mixed woods, mostly white pines. It was appar- 

 ently an old squirrel's nest, and I would have passed it by if I had not 

 seen the bird fly from it; it was made of small sticks, rubbish, strips of 

 inner bark, and pine needles and was lined with chips of outer bark 

 and downy feathers of the owl; it measured 20 by 8 inches over 

 all, and the inner cavity was 7 by 6 inches in diameter and 2 inches 

 deep. It contained three eggs nearly ready to hatch. 



The other nests were all in white pines. One, apparently an old 

 hawk's nest, was about 40 feet up in a pine, surrounded by deciduous 

 trees in a grove of tall, mixed woods. Two of the others were in 

 rather open situations, where solitary pines, or small groups of pines, 

 were scattered among a low growth of small deciduous trees and 

 scrub oaks. These were, apparently, old crows' nests, well concealed 

 in the thick tops of small pines, 25 and 35 feet from the ground. They 

 were evidently successive nests of the same pair of owls ; the first held 

 five young on May 19, 1920, and the second contained five eggs, 

 about one-quarter incubated, on April 20, 1921. This latter nest 

 was made of coarse sticks and was lined with dead pine needles, strips 

 of inner bark, and many owl feathers ; it measured 24 inches in outside 

 and 12 inches in inside diameter and was hollowed to a depth of 4 

 inches. 



The other three nests were the successive nests of another pair of 

 owls, in a large tract of dense white pine woods, where I had previously 

 found Cooper's hawks nesting. These nests ranged from 30 to 40 

 feet above the ground, and two of them were in nests known to have 



