176 NEW. YORK ‘ZOOLOGICAL, SOCIERY: 
settled down upon the woods, the strange voices come to us— 
Whoo, whoo-who6, whdo-wh66! and the owl leaves its hollow 
tree and sets out upon its nightly hunt. When one is suddenly 
awakened at midnight by one of these birds close overhead, 
staring, and hooting at the camp fire, one can sympathize with the 
superstitious fears of the ancients! 
Barred Owls are not shy and I have known them to fly up within 
a few yards of a man, governed apparently by curiosity, while by 
imitating their cry it is an easy matter to bring them, even from 
some distance. The hooting is unusually loud and frequent at the 
season of courtship from February to April. Two to four eggs 
are laid in the hollow of a tree or in an old crow nest. 
These birds are easily tamed and make interesting and amusing 
pets, and if liberated in a barn or corn crib during the night, will 
clear the premises of all rats and mice. Over half their food, in 
a wild state, consists of mice, while they also feed on small birds, 
moles, frogs, and insects. It is only very rarely that they attack 
poultry, the evidence being that on the whole they are of great 
benefit to mankind. Although as a rule nocturnal, I have seen 
these birds hunting in daylight in the dark spruce forests of Nova 
Scotia. 
In Florida and the Gulf States, the humid climate has darkened 
the plumage, and perhaps the warmer temperature has had some- 
thing to do with the reduction of the feathering on the toes, and 
these birds have been given the rank of a sub-species. The birds 
of southern Texas are also slightly different. In the West, how- 
ever, the Barred, or as it is there called, the Spotted Owl, differs 
so considerably in plumage, besides being less in size, that it is 
considered as specifically distinct, Syrnium occidentale Xantus. 
So rare is it, and so fond of the wilder portions of the mountains 
that little is known of its habits or of those of the darker form 
which inhabits the coast of Washington and British Columbia. 
GROUP IV: 
GREAT GRAY OWLS, Scotiaptex. 
Considerably larger, but showing its rather close relationship 
in its general resemblance to the barred owl, the Great Gray Owl, 
Scotiapter nebulosa (Forster), of the far north, is to most of us 
known only from books and skins. Although it is a bird of the 
deep forest, and therefore never goes beyond the limit of tree 
growth, yet even the severest winters force it but a short distance 
southward and seldom beyond the northern border of the United 
