76 Proceedings of the 



Burrowing Owls are very common in the neighborhood 

 of prairie-dog towns in the sandhill region and could be 

 found at any time in such places, either perched on a 

 neighboring fence post, if such there happened to be, or 

 standing on a mound or in the entrance to one of the bur- 

 rows. When alarmed they would give their peculiar 

 "cack- cack- cack- cack- cack- cack- cack — " and disap- 

 pear down the burrow or take wing and fly off some dis- 

 tance and drop into the grass where they would remain 

 motionless but on the alert until they deemed the danger 

 too great, when they would again repeat the performance. 

 Sometimes wlien standing in the entrance to their bur- 

 rows they would gradually sink lower and lower, on being 

 approached, until they had entirely disappeared under 

 ground. They did not become so easily alarmed when 

 approached by a vehicle or by anyone riding on horse- 

 back, but would stand bowing sedately in a manner 

 ludicrous in the extreme, only seeking safety, if at all, 

 when at rather close quarters. 



At times an owl could be seen going through a perform- 

 ance which was most amusing. The solemn little actor 

 combined bowing and blinking with turning from side to 

 side so that it appeared to be bowing and nodding first to 

 one side and then to the other, the whole proceeding so 

 comical that I never tired of watching it. Frequently at 

 dusk the owls could be seen hunting. Their method con- 

 sisted of a hovering with rapid wing beats followed by a 

 swinging flight to another position or a sudden and swift 

 drop to earth. Usually the birds remained in the valleys, 

 but one was seen hunting in the hills, and on August 31, 

 1912, I found a bird at the entrance to its burrow a mile 

 or two from the valley and the nearest dog town. 



At night the song of the owls could be heard in the vi- 

 cinity of their nests, a peculiar, weird, "cuc-cuc-cuc-cuc- 

 cuc- — " repeated in a monotone so rapidly as to seem to 

 roll, quite a different note from the alarm cackle. This 

 song has been compared to that of our native cuckoos, but 

 to me there is little in the one to suggest the other; the 

 performance of the owls has a distinct sound which is char- 

 acteristic although the difference between it and the note 

 of the cuckoos is difficult to write in mere syllables. 



49, Coccysus americanus (Linnaeus) — Yellow-billed Cuckoo. 

 Cuckoos were found in the thickets along both rivers 



