OWL SECRETS 
297 
“ Hoot Owl,” they are entirely distinct. The Barred Owl is 
a trifle the smaller, lacking the conspicuous ear-tufts or 
“horns” of the other, with dark iris instead of yellow, and 
plumage very differently shaded and marked. Its eggs are 
laid by, or soon after, the middle of March. Both kinds 
are quite tenacious of a locality, unless disturbed, but the 
Barred Owl is, I think, the more so. One can find a pair of 
them in the same woods year after year, though the nest 
may have been repeatedly plundered, or one of the birds 
killed. In the latter case the survivor secures a new mate 
and maintains the family estate and traditions. 
The Great Horned Owl does not often now, in southern 
New England, nest in hollow trees, but the Barred Owls 
prefer such a location, if indeed they can find a hollow large 
enough in our much-devastated forests. If they cannot, 
they usually patch up some old affair of hawks’ or squirrels’ 
construction, generally in a tall pine in a thick, dark grove. 
Slovenliness is inbred in owl nature. They do whatever is 
easiest, and it is easier to lay the eggs in the bottom of a 
hollow on the soft decayed wood than even to fix up a squir¬ 
rels’ nest. 
For some years a pair of Barred Owls nested in the cavity 
of an oak where a branch had been torn off only twelve feet 
from the ground and the wood had rotted out. This was in 
a strip of mixed woodland, just back of the main street of 
the pleasant little village of North Middleboro. I used to 
hear the owls hooting, but somehow could never find their 
home, though I scoured the whole region. But one bright 
afternoon, the eleventh of April, as I was up a tall pine 
examining the nest of a Red-shouldered Hawk, I heard 
the prolonged hooting of the Barred Owl. Starting in search, 
I happened to pass the hollow tree, and thoughtlessly gave it 
a kick. Such a thundering, scrambling, whirring sound issued 
