ELEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 183 
yellow light. Quick turns of his head show how keen is his vision, 
perceiving the slightest movement of anything within sight. The 
sharp talons open and shut on the branch, the bill is given one or 
two vicious snaps, and, noiseless as a shadow, the dreaded hunter 
swoops from his perch. 
The most common cry of this owl is a deep, gruff H60-hoo 
whoo! given, however, with far less expression and modulation 
than the-utterances of the barred owl. A rarer sound is a sud- 
den, loud, blood-curdling shriek, which well befits the character 
of this feathered tiger. Wherever found it is easily master of the 
night—a noiseless, flying shadow of death, which must ever haunt 
the timid creatures crouching on the branches or among the 
stubble. 
Crows have sworn eternal war upon the Great Horned Owl, and 
when they discover one in the daytime they will shout at it for 
hours, and persecute it in any way which they dare. Quartering 
the fields and woods at night, the strong owl swoops unerringly 
upon rabbit, mouse, or bird. In the north it feeds upon the large 
Arctic hare and grouse. No bird of prey excels it in courage or 
fierceness, and it is the only bird I know, which, in captivity, wil! 
fearlessly attack a man entering its cage. It occasionally kills 
and devours even our largest hawks—the red-tailed and red- 
shouldered, while geese and young foxes have been known to fall 
victims to it. It suffers no other large and nocturnal owl to live 
unmolested on the hunting grounds it has chosen, and whenever 
Great Horned Owls appear for the first time in a locality, the 
barred owls rapidly decrease, and finally give way altogether 
and go elsewhere. Of all the owls this is the most frequent 
visitor to our hen-roosts, but far from universally condemning it 
on this account, the habits and food of these birds should be 
studied in each particular locality before it is indiscriminately 
slain. The mice, hares, and insects outnumber the poultry three 
to one in the stomachs of those birds which have been examined. 
Two or three white eggs are laid in a last year’s nest of some 
hawk or crow, and in the latitude of New York the eggs are 
sometimes deposited as early as the first of March, before the last 
snow flurry has past. 
As the woods are cut down, the Great Horned Owl becomes 
rarer, everywhere retreating to the wilder, less settled regions. 
This will be the first species of owl to disappear when mankind 
has carried his areas of cultivation throughout the mountains and 
backwoods. 
