162 BULLETIN 17 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



found, containing heavily incubated eggs, the owl merely flew around 

 at a safe distance, snapping its bill and uttering a variety of weird 

 notes. At the Saskatchewan nest the owl did not leave the nest at all 

 but assumed her threatening attitude as I looked over the edge of the 

 nest; she settled down again on her heavily incubated eggs when I 

 withdrew. 



Once I sat under a nest tree for some time, eating my lunch, without 

 seeing any signs of life about the nest. When I climbed the tree the 

 old owl flew off the nest, where she had been quietly brooding her 

 young all the time. Her cries of distress soon brought her mate to the 

 scene, and the performance began. Both parents were very demon- 

 strative, flying about close at hand, alighting in the tree close to me, 

 threatening to attack me, and indulging in a long line of owl profanity. 

 One of the owls occasionally dropped to the ground, as if wounded, and 

 fluttered along, crying piteously or mewing like a cat ; by this ruse she 

 succeeded in tolling my companion some distance away before she 

 flew. This wounded-bird act, which I have never seen performed by 

 any other bird of prey, was repeated several times on this and on other 

 occasions. 



Once, while I was standing in plain sight in a treetop near a nest, 

 the female stood for a long time, perfectly still, a short distance away 

 in the thick woods; meantime the male was perched near me, watch- 

 ing me and making frequent short flights over and around me, scold- 

 ing and snapping his bill. Finally I crouched down more out of sight 

 among some thick branches; the male soon flew to the nest and gave 

 a low, squealing whistle, and the female returned to the nest at once, 

 as if she had been assured that all was well. 



W. Leon Dawson (1923) describes a clever ruse, employed to entice 

 him away from a nest, as follows: 



The male parent had delivered himself of his quaint objurgations, and had 

 retired from the scene in disgust. The female had caterwauled and cajoled and 

 exploded and entreated by turns, all in vain. * * * All of a sudden the Owl 

 left her perch, flew to some distance and pounced upon the ground, where she 

 could not well be seen through the intervening foliage. Upon the instant of the 

 pounce, arose the piercing cries of a creature in distress, and I, supposing that 

 the bird in anger had fallen upon a harmless Flicker which I knew dwelt in that 

 neck of the woods, scrambled down instanter and hurried forward. The prompt 

 binoculars revealed neither Flicker nor mouse. There was nothing whatever in 

 the Owl's talons. The victor and victim were one and the same, and I was the 

 dupe. Yet so completely was the play carried out that the bird fluttered her 

 wings and trod vigorously, with a rocking motion, as though sinking her claws 

 deeply into a victim. 



William Brewster (1925) writes: 



Half an hour after sunset this evening [June 12, 1S74J I was hastening through 

 woods of intermingling pitch pines and red cedars near Arlington Heights when a 

 faint, intermittent crick-a-crick, not unlike the squeaking of an ungreased wheel- 



