1 58 BoLLES, Notes on Whip-poor-wills and Oivls. [AprU 



Mr. E, C. Mason brought me little Scops on the evening of 

 Thursday April 17. He brought him in a basket in which he had 

 been confined for a day or two. He was captured in Arlington 

 on the 15th. He was sitting in the mouth of a hollow in a tree, and 

 looked like a dead stick poked into the hole. Mason said he was 

 motionless but suddenly fell into the hole as a stick would slip in — 

 without a wiggle. He did not offer to bite Mason. Mason 

 brought him to me about 8, p. m; I brought up Puify and Fluffy 

 to the library and then let out Scops who flew about. At first 

 Puffy and Fluffy only watched him with curiosity but later Fluffy 

 did his best to catch him, dodging and circling over the gas jet. I 

 took the big owls away and stroked Scops freely. That night he 

 spent in the back cellar. The next morning he flew against the 

 netting of Fluffy's cage and Fluffy struck for him full force. Scops 

 let go and flew back or Fluffy would have clinched him through the 

 wires. I at once saw plainly that they could not live together, so 

 Scops was taken up to Olive's room and left in possession. Friday 

 he ate nothing. On Saturday morning he had eaten some meat, 

 scraps of chicken entrails, and had drunk. He permits the freest 

 possible handling, caressing etc. Will sometimes hang head 

 downward by his feet — as though dead — or lie on his back in 

 the palm of my hand with eyes closed and no visible motion. On 

 Saturday morning I dragged a dead mouse across his floor by a 

 thread and he pounced instantly and crushed the nape of the neck, 

 pulled off pieces there, then severed the head and swallowed it 

 and then swallowed the whole body. Sunday he did the same. 

 The next day he saw me bring in a mouse and pounced on it almost 

 as soon as it touched the floor. Monday 2 p. m. I caught a sparrow 

 in my box trap but he took no notice of it until night although it 

 flew by him again and again for hours. After 10 p. m., I shut him 

 up in a closet with the sparrow and in the morning he had eaten all 

 but a small lot of feathers, some stiff, some soft. Tuesday I gave 

 him nothing. Wednesday a. m. I gave him a dead robin. He 

 began by eating the right eye and then tearing away scraps from 

 around the wound. 



Thursday or Friday I found him dead. Mason after dissection 

 concurred in my theory that he died from injury to the brain due 

 to beating his head against a wire netting at the window. 



