IKi Birds of Pennsylvania. 



Genus BUBC^Uuvier. 

 375. Bubo virginianus (Gmel.). 



Great Horned Owl; Hoot Owl. 



{Plate 19.) 



Length, about 25 inches; extent of wings, about 58 inches. 



Hub. — Eastern North America, west to the Afississippi Valley, and from Tiahrador 

 south to Costa Rica. 



This well-known and rather common inhabitant of the forests can 

 easily be recognized by its large size, the conspicuous white feathers 

 of the throat and the long ear-tufts which measure 2^^ inches or more 

 in length. The Great Horned, the largest of all our native Owls, is 

 the first to commence nesting, I have found its eggs in Februar^^ and 

 am told that it occasionally lays in January. In this locality the 

 Great Horned Owl seldom breeds in hollow trees ; sometimes it con- 

 structs a rude and bulky nest of sticks, lined with grasses and feathers, 

 on the large horizontal limbs of trees in its favorite wooded retreats. 

 Its eggs, measuring about 2^ inches in length by 2 inches in width, 

 are mostly deposited in the deserted nests of Hawks or Crows. 

 Although it is fetated by different writers that this species lays four or 

 more eggs, I have never found, in seven nests examined, over two eggs 

 or a like number of young. Mr. Thomas H. Jackson, of West Chester, 

 Pa., writing in the Ornithologist and O'ologist^ June, 1886, says: "In 

 thirteen nests of this bird that have come under personal notice, twelve 

 contained two eggs, or young, and only one contained three eggs. All 

 the nests referred to above were placed in branches of trees, and were 

 generally those of Hawks or Crows, renovated or enlarged. Occa- 

 sionally a hollow tree is used for this purpose. Upon one occasion I 

 replaced the Owl's eggs taken from a nest with those of the common 

 hen, and upon visiting them at the expiration of three weeks, found 

 that both the latter had been hatched and had fallen from the nest, 

 about twenty feet from the ground, and that the Owls had deserted 

 the locality. The Great Horned Owls are liberal providers for their 

 young. I have frequently found full grown rabbits lying in the nest 

 beside the young, and scarcely a nest visited did not have a strong 

 odor of skunk, while bones and feathers were scattered around attest- 

 ing to the predacious habits of the proprietors." The flight of the Great 

 Horned Owl is elevated, rapid and graceful. It sails with apparent 

 ease and in large circles, in the manner of an eagle, rises and descends 

 without the least difficulty, by merely inclining its wings or its tail as 

 it passes through the air. Now and then it glides silently close over 

 the earth with incomparable velocity, and drops, as if shot dead, on 

 the prey beneath. At other times, it suddenly alights on the top of a 

 fence stake or a dead stump, shakes its feathers, arranges them, and 



