HISTORY OP CERTAIN GREAT HORNED OWLS — KEYES, 405 



from the lower branches of an oak and took up a new position deeper 

 in the shadows of the woods. So far as mere size was concerned the 

 owlets had reached and even surpassed the adult owl estate, though 

 probably still under the care and tutelage of their elders. From now 

 on they would need to shrink and harden into the strength and agility 

 necessary to enter the competition of adult owl life and maintain 

 themselves in the general struggle for existence. 



February of 1908 again found Mr. Smith and me rapping anxiously 

 at the old elm of the timber pasture. With the facilities at our dis- 

 posal we could accomplish little more with the young birds, but 

 during the year we had formulated a plan by which there might be a 

 bare possibility of securing a portrait of the old owl as she sat within 

 her doorway. Our hopes were raised by the reports of both Mr. 

 Benedict and Mr. McFarland that, as the nesting season approached, 

 the owls had been heard hooting as usual. Our misgivings began 

 when we found piled about the nest tree the cordwood from a number 

 of the neighboring young lindens. The old nest cavity was found 

 empty. The owls were able to endure intrusion into their home life 

 for two seasons, but evidently did not take kindly to radical changes 

 in their immediate environment. 



A mile west of the old home is another forest fragment of perhaps 

 60 acres and in this a pair of red-tailed hawks had built their bulky 

 aerie in a tall white-ash tree, 75 feet from the ground. Following 

 the custom of most of their tribe when suitable hollow trees are no 

 longer to be had, the big owls appropriated this new refuge and in it, 

 in spite of rain, sleet, snow, and wind, successfully raised their brood. 

 To be sure we had no exact proof that these were the very owls with 

 which we had dealt in other years, nevertheless we felt morally certain. 

 The new locality was the nearest available one and for many years, 

 until 1908, had not boasted its pair of owls. 



The years 1909 and 1910 add nothing new to the history of the 

 owls except that in the former year a January gale destroyed the nest 

 in the ash tree and the valiant pair were apparently forced to a new, 

 but similar, retreat. Their history, so far as we were concerned, was 

 a closed one. During the season of 1 907 1 had located five pairs of great 

 horned owls within a radius of 7 miles of Mount Vernon. None of 

 these could be intimately studied except the pair whose history I have 

 tried to trace. In February of 1910 I again tried to locate breeding 

 birds of this species, but without success. In spite of the big fellow's 

 tenacity in clinging to a locality once chosen, in spite of his clever- 

 ness in escaping observation, it almost seems now that the coming 

 of the shotgun army and the going of the protecting forests were 

 gradually making the great horned owl, along with many another 

 species without which the woods are stiller and humanity poorer, in 

 the more settled parts of our country at least, a member of a slowly 

 vanishing race. 



