254 BULLETIN 17 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Dr. John B. May tells me that he had some young screech owls 

 confined in a latticed shed. "Through the openings of the lattice 

 nasturtium plants climbed, and I found that the owls ate considerable 

 of the stems and leaves of these vines. Pellets composed of the woody 

 fibers of the leaf stems were frequently found in the shed." Perhaps 

 they needed the additional "roughage" in their food. 



Behavior. — If the great horned owl can rightly be called a "feathered 

 tiger", the screech owl deserves to be called a "feathered wildcat", for 

 it certainly is a savage little brute, as some of the foregoing remarks 

 on food indicate. Its courage in attacking birds much larger than 

 itself is admirable, but cruelty and cannibalism are not so much 

 admired. I once took a mated pair of these owls from a nest in which 

 they were sitting on five eggs. The eggs went into a friend's collection, 

 but I put the two owls in a cage by themselves in my aviary. I was 

 surprised, a few days later, to find that one of them had killed and 

 partially eaten its mate; I wondered if the loss of the eggs had any- 

 thing to do with it. Fred. H. Carpenter (1883) says that his captive 

 screech owl savagely attacked a long-eared owl which he put into the 

 enclosure with it, so that it was necessary to separate the two birds. 

 William Brewster (1907) published a thrilling story, on the authority 

 of Mrs. John W. Ames, of Cambridge, of a pair of very aggressive screech 

 owls that were raising a brood of young near a house in Concord, 

 Mass. The occupants of the house were savagely attacked whenever 

 they ventured near the trees where the owls were living after dark; 

 even the neighbors were attacked when they passed the gate. People 

 were repeatedly struck on the head and face, sometimes blood drawn, 

 and this happened so often that they adopted the habit of wearing 

 hoods or baseball masks when they went out in the evening. This was 

 a rather extreme case of persistent hostility and boldness, but I have 

 found in the literature no less than six somewhat similar accounts of 

 screech owls attacking men, women, and children, in fancied defence 

 of their young. This is apparently a common habit, but it oftener 

 results in threats rather than actual injury to human beings. 



The screech owl is one of our most strictly nocturnal owls. It does 

 not hunt, and is said not to eat, during daylight Soon after dusk it 

 sallies forth on its large, silent wings and glides swiftly along over the 

 lowland fields and meadows in search of mice, or courses over the tree- 

 tops to catch the larger flying insects. During the day it is inactive, 

 dozing in some hollow tree, some dark corner, or huddled up close to 

 the trunk of some densely foliaged tree; often, however, it will perch 

 motionless all day in some opener situation, relying on its concealing 

 pose and protective coloration to escape detection. Often it will sit 

 for hours at the entrance to a hole in a tree, or some opening in a build- 

 ing, facing the bright sunlight. Its eyesight is strong enough, with 

 the pupil fully dilated, to see well at night, but, with the pupil 



