BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGIOX. iqi; 



93. Asio wilsonianus (Less.). 

 American Long-eared Owl. Long-eared Owl. 



Permanent resident, sometimes common in autumn or winter, rare at all other seasons. 



NESTING DATES. 



April I — 10. 



At irregular intervals — perhaps on an average once every five or si.x years 

 — we have a very considerable influ.\ of Owls from further north. The move- 

 ment ordinarily begins in October — or even a little earlier — and seldom reaches 

 its height before the middle of November. Many of the birds are killed by 

 sportsmen or collectors, and others, no doubt, go further south to pass the 

 winter, but a certain proportion usually remain with us until early spring. Dur- 

 ing these flights numbers of Long-eared Owls pass through the hands of our 

 local ta.xidermists. I have known as many as forty or fifty to be received 

 by one man, in the course of a few weeks, most of them from eastern Massa- 

 chusetts. No single field observer, however, is likely to meet with more than 

 two or three of the birds in any one season. In autumn I have repeatedly 

 found them roosting by day in deciduous trees or shrubs in the Fresh Pond 

 Swamps, even after the leaves had fallen, but at all times of the year they pre- 

 fer to haunt dense evergreen woods, especially those which are largely made 

 up of white pines or Virginia junipers. 



Two instances of the breeding of the Long-eared Owl in the Cambridge 

 Region have come under my personal observation. On July 18, 1867, as I was 

 walking in company with a friend under some large white pines which at that 

 time covered a hill southwest of Rock Meadow, an Owl of this species came 

 flying close about us, uttering loud and peculiar cries. Shortly afterwards 

 we found one of its young perched in a neighboring tree. The young bird, 

 although fully grown and able to fly, was still clothed, for the most part, in down 

 and hence could not have been long out of the nest. On another occasion (June 

 12, 1874) I discovered a nest, containing two half-grown young, at Arlington 

 Heights. The nest was in a Virginia juniper which, with a few other trees of 

 the same kind, stood on the outskirts of a dense and extensive piece of woods 

 composed chiefly of pitch pines. The dates just mentioned may seem exception- 

 ally late in comparison with the ' nesting dates ' given above, but they are not 

 really so, for the Long-eared Owl, like most birds of prey, requires a long time 



