LONG-EARED OWL 157 



Grinnell and Storer (1924), writing of conditions in the Yosemite 

 region, say: "In all cases the owls had preempted older nests of the 

 Black-billed Magpie, a bird common in that vicinity. The owls 

 begin to nest somewhat earlier than do the magpies, and hence gain 

 possession of the last year's nests before the original builders have 

 occasion to reclaim them. The magpies thus have to build anew. 

 In almost every instance a newly constructed and occupied magpie's 

 nest was found within 15 to 50 feet of an owl's nest." 



Major Bendire (1892) says that J. W. Preston "took a fresh laid 

 egg of the Long-eared Owl from a nest of Crow's eggs." J. A. Munro 

 (1919) says: "On April 19, 1917, I found a female occupying a new 

 crows' nest and sitting on one egg. Broken crow's eggs on the ground 

 below the nest indicated that she had evicted the original owners. 

 On April 30, the crows were again in possession and the nest contained 

 four crow's eggs. The owl then laid four eggs in an old crow's nest, 

 fifty yards from the first one." 



Sidney E. Ekblaw (1919) found a nest in an apple tree in an old 

 orchard and says: "About the nest small branches were very dense, 

 thereby offering very good protection for a secluded nest. The nest 

 itself was composed entirely of sticks with but a very few leaves for a 

 lining. * * * In another crotch in the same tree we observed an 

 old nest, identical in composition to the present one. As the long- 

 eared owl has been recorded in this vicinity every year recently, 

 doubtless the second nest was last year's." 



Several instances have been recorded of the long-eared owl nesting 

 on the ground, both in this country and in England. L. M. Terrill 

 found one in the Laurentian Hills, northwest of Montreal, on June 4, 

 1928, and has sent me a photograph of the bird on its nest (pi. 36) 

 and some elaborate notes on the subject. It was in a boggy, black 

 spruce forest bordering a lake. "The nest was merely a shallow 

 cavity, at the base of a black spruce sapling on the margin of a glade, 

 well within the woods, lined with a very few twigs, flakes of bark and 

 Labrador-tea leaves; any or all of this material could quite easily 

 have fallen there. The glade was carpeted with sphagnum, with a 

 sprinkling of such plants as Ledum and Rhodora and was somewhat 

 littered with fallen trees, owing to lumbering in bygone years." Mr. 

 Terrill thinks the owl was forced to nest on the ground because of the 

 scarcity of suitable tree nests. He has records of more than 20 nests 

 of this owl, and all the others were in old nests of crows or sharp- 

 shinned hawks; all were in conifers in dense evergreen woods, mainly 

 cedar swamps. 



Mr. Rathbun tells me that if a set of eggs is taken the owl will lay 

 a second set in about 20 days. 



Eggs. — The long-eared owl lays three to eight eggs in a set, but 

 four or five seems to be the commonest number. They are pure 



