78 NOKTH AMERICAN OOLOGY. PAKT I. 



or falling a few feet. During the middle of September I had given me a male bird 

 with a broken Aving. He lived in confinement two days, and died from the effects of 

 the wound. Soon after, a boy brought me a female with five eggs that had been 

 taken from a burrow, five feet from the mouth. The burrow wound among the 

 roots of a tree beneath which it was dug. The bird was very fierce on her cage, 

 and fought me with her wings and beak, uttering all the while a long shrill note, 

 resembling a file drawn across the teeth of a saw. I supplied her with eleven full- 

 grown mice, which she devoured during the first thirty-six hours of her confine- 

 ment. In San Juan and Banda Oriental, they do not hover for prey in the day- 

 time, but watch from the top of some low trees, and do not perch on the fruit-trees, 

 such as the orange, fig, olive, &c. 



" My object was to discover if this bird burroAved its own habitation, and my ob- 

 servations of eight months failed to impress me with that belief I have conversed 

 with intelligent persons Avho have been familiar with their habits, and never did I 

 find one that believed it to be its own workman. It places a small nest of feathers 

 at the end of the hole, in Avhich are deposited five white eggs, though Nuttall men- 

 tions that this bird in North America lays but two. 



" In Banda Oriental, Avhere the country is as fine and food far more plenty than 

 upon the Pampas, this Owl is not common compared Avith the latter locality. The 

 reason is obAious. The Bizcacha does not exist north of the Plata, and consequently 

 these birds have a poor chance for finding habitations. 



" For thirty miles beyond the San Juan RiA'er, in Banda Oriental, the ground 

 was covered Avith dead beetles and other insects, the food of this bird ; but I did not 

 meet a single OavI during that day's journey. On the Pampas, Avhere thousands 

 upon thousands of Bizcachas undermine the soil, there in their true locality you find 

 the same number of Owls. About San Juan (not the river), at the foot of the 

 Andes, where a Bizcacha is rarely met AAdth, aa'c find only a foAV pairs ; and does the 

 hole dug among the roots of a tree appear to be the Avork of a bird or animal ] 



" Of this Oaa'I in North America, Audubon says it lives in the excavations of the 

 marmots, and does not dig for himself, as he is said to do in other parts of the Avorld 

 Avhere no burrowing animals exist. The several Avorks that I have consulted do not 

 in one instance state the manner in AA'hich these Owls Avork Avhen digging out a 

 habitation, though all agree that it does burroAV. Why could not some of these 

 gentlemen state the result of the observations regarding this particular fact % Per- 

 haps at some distant day some lucky ornithologist may catch a little felloAV at work, 

 and by reporting his evidence Avill upset my views upon the subject." 



