252 BULLETIN 17 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



owl of some kind. Examination of the snow about the body of the grouse showed 

 that no quadruped had caught the bird. Furthermore, the Screech Owl's stomach, 

 which was examined at the writer's office, contained much of the head and neck 

 of the grouse, as well as several sumac seeds, portions of rose-hips, and tiny twigs 

 with buds attached, which must have been swallowed with the gizzard of the 

 grouse. The owl was caught by both feet only a few minutes after the setting of 

 the trap, so it is fair to assume that the eating had been done prior to the setting 

 of the trap, probably just after the owl had killed its prey. 



H. E. Tuttle (1920) says: "I came upon a Screech Owl one day, car- 

 rying what seemed to be a small kitten. I followed his line of flight, 

 and as the burden proved too great a handicap for him in his effort to 

 place a safe distance between us, he dropped it, but lingered near as if 

 reluctant to yield it to my inspection. To my astonishment I dis- 

 covered that it was an infant Owl, quite downy and quite dead." 



Mrs. P. N. Jackson and G. Carleton (1931) write: "About two weeks 

 ago, in Mendham, N. J., a Screech Owl came down the chimney of a 

 house and ate up the Canary. * * * Feathers showed that the 

 Canary had been pulled between the bars of the cage." 



Screech owls feed quite extensively on insects; the list includes 

 June beetles and other beetles, cutworms, grasshoppers, locusts, crick- 

 ets, cicadas, katydids, noctuid moths, caterpillars, and hellgrammites. 

 Many of these are caught on the wing. Dr. Sutton (1929b) watched a 

 screech owl thus engaged, and writes: 



At first we were somewhat mystified by her actions. Soon we made out, how- 

 ever, that she was capturing insects which were flying about the peripheral twigs 

 of the tree. Some of these she evidently snatched from the twigs or leaves with 

 her feet; others she caught in mid-air, with her beak. Since I had never known 

 Screech Owls to capture prey thus I changed my position so as to be able to see 

 the bird more clearly. From my new station under the elm tree I saw the bird 

 catch thus, Fly catcher- wise, at least twenty insects, most, if not all of them, the 

 large beetles locally called June bugs or May beetles. We watched her for at least 

 three quarters of an hour. She caught about two insects a minute, returning 

 promptly to feed the noisy young. * * * 



This habit of capturing insects with the mouth, on the wing, instantly called to 

 mind the characteristics common to the Orders Strigiformes and Caprimulgi- 

 formes. Birds of both Orders have soft, lax plumage permitting noiseless flight; 

 both are at least to a degree, nocturnal, possessing relatively large eyes. The 

 mouth of the Screech Owl, while hardly to be compared with that of the Whip- 

 poor-will from the standpoint of siz,e, is, nevertheless, relatively large or wide, and 

 the hair-like feathers of the nasal portion of the facial disc probably perform the 

 same insect catching function as the enormously developed rictal bristles of the 

 Whip-poor-will. 



Louis B. Kalter writes to me: "A screech owl practically snatched 

 from my hands two male cecropia moths (Samia cecropia), around 4:30 

 a. m., when I was attempting to catch the moths with my hands. In 

 the evening I had hung a live female cecropia moth, by means of a 

 thread, in the open window of my bedroom. It had lured a number of 

 males by its scent and, when I leaned from the window to catch them, 



