204 BULLETIN 17 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



nest made of oak sticks and weed stalks, 35 feet up in an oak tree, 

 on the edge of a steep canyon. 



M. C. Badger writes to me that he has found two nests of spotted 

 owls in nests occupied by Cooper's hawks, the previous year, in Santa 

 Paula Canyon, Calif., and that he captured a young owl at 6,000 

 feet elevation on Mount Pifios. 



Eggs. — The spotted owl lays two or three eggs, usually only two, 

 and very rarely four; one of Mr. Dunn's sets, referred to above, con- 

 tained four eggs, and is the only set of this size that I have heard 

 of. The eggs are practically indistinguishable from those of the 

 barred owl, though they average slightly smaller, especially in width. 

 They are pure white and rather oval, and the shell is slightly granu- 

 lated and not glossy. The measurements of 23 eggs average 49.9 

 by 41.3 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 

 53.9 by 43.2, 42.3 by 35.8, and 44.5 by 33.5 millimeters. 



Young. — Very little seems to be known about the development and 

 behavior of the young. Donald R. Dickey (1914), while taking a fine 

 series of photographs at a nest containing young, noted that at about 

 four o'clock "all the owls had a period of sudden activity. The young 

 came to the edge and tried their wings, hopping and flapping to and 

 fro in the exposed part of the nest hole." Some three weeks later, 

 when he visited the locality again, he was surprised to find the two 

 young owls and their parent perched in an oak tree some 100 yards 

 from the nest; he says: 



That the young could have reached the spot unaided seems incredible, for 

 although the primaries were well grown out, they were, with that exception, in 

 the complete down, and were still weak. The alternative is that the old birds, 

 continuing their distrust of the dangling rope, had deliberately moved them. 

 Certain it is that they would not normally have left the nest perhaps for weeks. 



* * * The young were docile, downy little things of a soft grayish and 

 buffy white. They used neither bill nor claw, and the direst threat of the larger 

 bird was a slight parting of the bill as it shrank back from the touch of our hands. 



Plumages. — I have never seen a small downy young of the spotted 

 owl in the natal down, which is probably pure white, as it is in the 

 barred owl. I have examined the young owl that Mr. Dickey took, 

 which is now in his collection. This bird is nearly fully grown, and 

 the wings and tail are nearly developed, but the body and head are in 

 the secondary down, or first downy plumage. The head and neck are 

 covered with soft, "cream-buff" down; the soft, fluffy feathers of the 

 back are "clay color" to "cinnamon-buff", with three broad bars of 

 "snuff brown" on each feather; the soft plumage of the under parts 

 is paler, with paler bars; the long, fluffy down on the thighs is "cream- 

 buff" and immaculate; the wings and tail are as in the adult. 



Material is lacking to trace subsequent molts and plumages, but an 

 August bird shows the beginning of the molt from the above juvenal 



