426 Bowtss, Kennicott’s Screech Owl. bees 
incidents seem beyond all comprehension. One friend told me 
that he heard an outcry among the ducks in his yard one night 
and, upon going out with a lantern, “found a Screech Owl riding 
around on the back of one of the big ducks, hanging onto its neck.” 
This may seem no more than odd, but another friend, Dr. G. D. 
Shaver, of Tacoma, had his faith in these little owls completely 
shattered. A pair came and nested on his place within a short 
distance of his pens of gamebirds and fancy bantams, and, as the 
entrance of the nest was only four feet from the ground, the doctor 
took great pleasure in watching the sitting bird and her family 
as they grew up. One morning during the winter of 1914-1915, 
which was a very mild season, he was nearly overcome upon visiting 
his yards to find two dead Golden Pheasants, four dead Ring- 
necked Pheasants, and one Ring-neck cock so badly hurt that it 
died a few days later. All were, of course, grown birds at that 
time of the year. The injuries were nearly all gashes and rips in 
the head and neck, so the blame was laid to rats although none 
were ever seen or caught there. However, the pens were com- 
pletely enclosed in two inch mesh hen-wire netting and nothing 
of the kind happened again that winter, the owls nesting in their 
regular homestead the following spring. The winter of 1915-1916 
was the most severe that Tacoma has experienced in twenty years, 
and one morning the doctor found a screech owl in his quail pen, 
in the snow, and close by the neatly plucked body of a Varied 
Thrush. This aroused his suspicions so he killed the owl, not 
wishing to take any chances of losing his quail. Incidentally it 
was interesting to find that a bird as large as the owl could enter 
through a two inch wire mesh. On the morning of February 4, 
1916, the doctor visited his yards and found a scene of murder 
similar to that of the previous year. In one pen were four of his 
prize Buff Cochin Bantams mangled and dead, some being in their 
house and others out in their yard, while in another pen were two 
fine cock Golden Pheasants in a similar condition. The wounds 
were similar in location and character to those made on the birds 
killed about a year before, but this time part of the head of one of 
the bantams had been eaten. There was no indication whatever 
of what had caused the damage, nor of how any predatory creature 
could have entered, so the doctor put a liberal dose of strychnine 
