AMERICAN HAWK OWL 377 



After a half-hour's search through a heavy stretch of timber, I located the 

 bird perched at the tip of a tall live spruce, partly hidden by the foliage. Then 

 I began an inspection of all dead stubs and trees in the vicinity. I had given up 

 hope of finding a nest and had started on, when, by mere chance, I happened to 

 catch sight of a hole in a dead spruce fully 200 yards away. A close approach 

 showed a sitting bird which afterwards proved to be the male. Its tail was pro- 

 truding at least two inches from the hole, while the bird's head was turned so 

 that it was facing out over its back. When T tapped the tree the bird left the nest, 

 flew off about thirty yards, turned and made for my head like a shot. It planted 

 itself with its full-weight onto my skull, drawing blood from three claw-marks 

 in my scalp. My hat was torn and thrown twelve feet. All this the owl did with 

 scarcely a stop in its headlong swoop. When as far the other side the courageous 

 bird made another dash, and then another, before I had collected enough wits 

 to get in a shot. The female, which was evidently the bird I had first discovered 

 on lookout duty, then made her appearance, but was less vociferous. The nest 

 contained three newly-hatched young and six eggs in various advanced stages of 

 incubation. 



A. D. Henderson (1919 and 1925) has found a number of nests 

 of the hawk owl in the muskeg country near Belvedere, Alberta. All 

 his nests were in natural cavities or in enlarged woodpeckers' holes 

 in dead stubs. A nest found on April 1, 1915 (pi. 84) is described as 

 follows: 



"The seven eggs were slightly incubated and were in the hollow 

 top of a dead tamarac or spruce stub as shown in the picture. The 

 nest was about ten feet from the ground and hollow about ten inches 

 deep. The eggs rested in a hollow in the crumbled rotten wood at the 

 bottom of the hole. There was no nesting material but this rotten 

 wood and a few feathers." 



Of another nest, found on April 4, he says: "The seven eggs could 

 be seen through an old Flicker's hole almost on a level with them. 

 They rested on a few rotten chips and feathers and lay on top of dry 

 moss and grasses with which the old Flicker's nest had been filled up, 

 likely by a squirrel." 



One nest was "about forty feet up in the broken top of a tamarac 

 stub"; another "nesting stub was a large leaning balsam poplar about 

 thirty-five feet high, standing near a muskeg"; still another "was 

 evidently an enlarged hole of the Pileated Woodpecker, and is the 

 only instance in which I have seen a nest that was not in the broken 

 top of a stub." He has found this owl nesting in old crows' nests 

 several times. 



I have a set of seven eggs in my collection, collected by Samuel 

 Anderson for the Rev. W. W. Perrett, near Island Harbor Bay, 

 Labrador, on May 7, 1914. The nest was in a rotten stump about 

 5 feet from the ground And there is a set of five eggs in the Thayer 

 collection, taken by E. Herbert Montgomery at Lance au Loup, 

 Labrador, on May 3, 1899. This nest was "a mass of sticks and moss 



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