138 



AMERICAN ORXITHOWGY. 



tened to them as they sat in the top of a great white oak or flitted silently 

 overhead. Occasionally, one I took to be the female, would go into the little 

 cave. They did not appear to notice me and "who-whoed" to their heart's 

 content, and I decided that the female had a slightly louder and deeper voice 

 than her mate. This season I made upward of thirty trips to the nest and 

 learned that although they are nocturnal birds, they sometimes lay their eggs 

 in the daytime. This egg was laid at about nine in the morning; at the end 

 of two weeks no more had been laid, and I took this and put in its place an 

 egg of a Red Leghorn. I visited the place daily, but on the third day, for 

 some reason, she quit the nest and gave up the poultry business. On one oc- 

 casion after the second set had been taken from this nest, she laid a third 

 set in an old Red-tailed Hawk nest, seventy-eight feet from the ground in an 

 old sycamore about three hundred yards up the creek from the nest in the 

 cliff. 



If I remember correctly the eggs were usually deposited at intervals of 

 from two to five days, and incubation was irregular in them, one little owl ap- 

 pearing several days previous to his brothers or sisters. The old nest was 

 on sandstone and contained gravel, dirt, bones, etc., the natural accumulation 

 of years of owl occupancy. 



