NORTHERN BARRED OWL 183 



none too common at that. My notes, from 1891 to 1935, give the 

 records of 38 nests examined; in 1924 I found the nests of three pairs, 

 and during eight other years I found the nests of two pairs each year. 

 The local distribution of the barred owl in this region coincides almost 

 exactly with that of the red-shouldered hawk; I have always con- 

 sidered these two as complementary and friendly species ; their haunts 

 and their food are very similar; one hunts exclusively by day and the 

 other largely by night or twilight in the same locality. They often 

 use the same nests alternately and rarely even simultaneously ; almost 

 always there is a red-shouldered hawk's nest in the same patch of 

 woods with the barred owl; once I found the occupied hawk's nest 

 within 24 yards of the owl's nest. 



In this region the barred owl shows a decided preference for heavy, 

 white-pine woods; 21 of my nests have been in white pines, only 6 in 

 deciduous woods, and the others in mixed woods of pines, oaks, and 

 chestnuts. I believe that this owl prefers to nest in a hollow in a 

 tree, where such a site is available; but suitable hollows are rather 

 scarce and the owls are more often forced to appropriate an old nest 

 of some other species. Of my 38 nests, 18 were in old nests of red- 

 shouldered or Cooper's hawks, often in a nest of the previous year; 

 in some few cases the hawk has used the nest again the following year ; 

 15 nests were in hollow trees, and 5 were in what were apparently old 

 squirrels' nests. 



With the exception of the red-shouldered hawk and the osprey, the 

 barred owl is the most constant in its attachment to its chosen nesting 

 site of any of our local hawks and owls. Brief histories of some of 

 our local pairs, or their successors, will illustrate this. The history of 

 one of our old pairs began in 1896, when Herbert K. Job discovered 

 the nest in a wide, deep cavity in a large, dead oak in a tract of swampy, 

 mixed woods near his home in North Middleboro, Mass. (pi. 42). 

 How long it had been previously occupied nobody knows. This old 

 cavity came very near being a death trap for me; I shinned the old 

 trunk without my clirnbers, and, in reaching into the deep cavity for 

 the eggs, I slipped and my arm became tightly wedged in the narrow 

 slit at the lower end of the opening; I struggled hopelessly for 25 min- 

 utes (by the village clock), calling in vain for help, before I finally 

 tore my arm loose and dropped exhausted to the ground. 



These owls occupied this old cavity until 1905, when the tree had 

 rotted so badly that a hole developed just below the nest and the 

 eggs rolled out. We found these owls off and on up to 1928, nesting 

 in these woods in old hawks' nests or in other hollow trees; they may 

 be there still, for we have not hunted there carefully since. The 

 above records, however, cover a period of 33 years. 



The Scotland pair had been regularly robbed by another collector 

 for a number of years before Mr. Job and I discovered it in 1897, in an 



