NORTHERN BARRED OWL 185 



When an old hawk's nest is used very little is done to it, as a rule, 

 beyond scraping out a hollow in the old lining ; but sometimes the old 

 nest is relined with Usnea or fresh, green sprays of white pine; occa- 

 sionally the rim of the nest is built up somewhat with fresh sticks, and 

 rarely it is profusely lined with green pine needles; usually it is deeply 

 hollowed. Old squirrels' nests are made of softer materials, and 

 when one of these is used the owls remove the top structure and hollow 

 out the center, so that not much more than the shell is left; one that 

 I measured was hollowed out to a depth of 9 inches, so that the owl 

 sank down into it out of sight; the eggs were laid on what rubbish 

 remained. 



Barred owls are slovenly and careless with their nests; I doubt if 

 they ever succeed in building a satisfactory nest for themselves; if 

 they attempt it, they generally make a poor job of it. If they can- 

 not find a good nest to appropriate, they will take a poor one and often 

 fail to make it secure. I have recorded in my notes six cases where 

 the nests were so insecure that the eggs rolled out and were broken. 

 The North Middleboro owls stuck to their old rotten stub until a 

 hole developed in the back of it and the eggs rolled out. The Scot- 

 land pair twice attempted to nest in such flimsy old nests that the 

 eggs fell out and were broken, once through a hole in the center and 

 once through a broken-down side; we wondered if these were not 

 attempts at nest building by the owls. 



Some interesting "partnership" nests have come under our observa- 

 tion. A very old nest in a large beech tree (pi. 41), in the North 

 Middleboro woods, has yielded us four sets of red-shouldered hawk's, 

 one set of barred owl's, and one set of great horned owl's eggs; it was 

 probably originally built by the hawks. Once we were almost sure 

 that we saw a barred owl fly from this nest, but we found that it held 

 three eggs of the hawk. 



The "reservoir woods", in Rehoboth, had long been the home of 

 one of our old reliable pairs of red-shouldered hawks until 1924, when 

 a pair of barred owls came in for the first time and occupied the hawk's 

 nest of the previous year, 48 feet up in the main crotch of a large 

 scarlet oak. Four years later this nest was occupied by a pair of red- 

 tailed hawks. Since then no hawks or owls of any land have been 

 found in these woods. 



Mr. Job (1908) tells of a nest in Seekonk, Mass., from which a 

 barred owl had been flushed several times. He went there one day 

 to photograph the owl but was surprised to see a red-shouldered hawk 

 fly from the nest, which was found to contain three eggs of the hawk. 

 Someone took these eggs, but later on the nest was found to contain 

 two eggs of the owl and one of the hawk. 



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