V °ifa6 In ] Palmer, The Florida Ground Owl. ioi 



the short grass a little way out on the prairie. I secured both 

 birds and they proved to be a pair. No others were seen at the 

 time and there was only one burrow at the place. Shortly after 

 daylight the next morning, I again visited the spot, and secured 

 another pair which I surprised out of the same burrow. The 

 female of this pair is a very dark bird in fine unworn and unfaded 

 plumage, much darker than any of many specimens subsequently 

 secured (No. 150,150, U. S. N. M. Coll.). A few hundred yards 

 up the same ridge and above our camp, Mr. Ridgway secured 

 three pairs from about five burrows. All these burrows were 

 placed at about the center of the highest and dryest parts of the 

 ridge and were within forty paces of the lake shore. The highest 

 parts of the ridge were hardly four feet above the lake level. 



Mr. Scott says 1 : "The highest parts of the open prairie, away 

 from the wooded ' islands,' the sloughs and ponds, seemed to be 

 the places chosen by the birds for their burrows. I found none 

 nearer than a quarter of a mile to any pond or slough." Again 

 he says : " The situation of a burrow was always high, dry ground, 

 and where there was some considerable growth of a kind of huckle- 

 berry." He thus found none in low wet places. Rhoads found 

 all his burrows in entirely different situations; as he says, 2 'in the 

 " margins of flat, grass-grown sand, of varying width, between the 

 swamp and the saw palmettoes, and extending indefinitely in the 

 direction of the stream." I found burrows and secured birds in 

 both kinds of places mentioned by these gentlemen. 



The Kissimmee Valley region is used almost entirely as cattle 

 ranges, and in order to decrease the abundance of dead grass and 

 other undesirable vegetation, and at the same time to increase the 

 possibility of a new growth of grass for the cattle, the cowboys 

 frequently, as the wind allows, set fire to the prairies in many 

 places. Thus during our entire visit we could always see fire or 

 smoke at several points on the horizon. It thus naturally happens 

 that when the sandy areas of the prairies are a little higher and 

 thus drier than the surrounding parts, these frequent fires prevent 

 almost entirely any vegetation from taking root on such places. 



'Auk, Vol. IX. 1S92. p. 217. 

 a Ibid., p. 4. 



