382 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



largest nearly full feathered, the smallest still in the down. This regular 

 difference can scarcely be accounted for by inequality of food, but seems to 

 indicate that the eggs were laid at intervals of about two weeks." 



I believe that where the Great Horned Owl nests in hollow trees the 

 number of eggs laid by them is usually apt to be larger than where an 

 open nest is used. The young are more secure in such a location and not 

 so likely to fall or be crowded out. 



According to the observations of several careful collectors, incubation is 

 said to last only three weeks, but I believe that twenty-eight days comes 

 nearer to the actual time required. Positive assertions in such matters can- 

 not well be made, especially as it appears that the eggs are, sometimes at 

 least, laid at considerable intervals, and in such cases incubation begins with 

 the first one laid. Where sets do not exceed the usual number, two, incuba- 

 tion probably does not begin until the set is completed, and it is not likely 

 that ordinarily a longer interval than three days occurs between the laying 

 of the two eggs. 



The Great Horned Owl will sometimes breed in confinement. Professor 

 Lantz, of Manhattan, Kansas, writes me: "A pair kept in a large roomy 

 cage, where they were seen and teased by many people, became very combat- 

 ive. In 1885 the female laid eggs as follows: One on January 14; this was 

 frozen because she would not sit on it. January 29 the nest contained two 

 more eggs, which were taken, and on February 25 two others. No more 

 were laid." 



They are not the kind of birds to make pets of. As a rule they are 

 ill tempered, no matter how well treated, and will attack their keeper with- 

 out any provocation, inflicting severe and sometimes dangerous wounds. One 

 of my correspondents, who raised one of these Owls from the nest and kept 

 it for three years, called it a "veritable feathered tiger," but they do not 

 all deserve quite so bad a name. 



I believe the female attends to the duties of incubation almost exclusively, 

 the male providing her with food. 



The Great Horned Owl is certainly a diligent, as well as a successful 

 hunter, and an abundance of food is generally found in a nest with the young. 

 Captain Goss found in one nest several partly devoured rabbits and more than 

 a dozen rats, all without their heads, but otherwise untouched. A corre- 

 spondent of Forest and Stream, in the number of May 4, 1882, writing from 

 Saratoga Springs, New York, under the nom de plume of "Hawkeye," states 

 that in a nest he examined, containing two young Owls, he found the following 

 animals: "A mouse, a young muskrat, two eels, four bullheads, a Woodcock, 

 four Ruffed Grouse, one rabbit, and eleven rats. The food taken out of the 

 nest weighed almost 18 pounds. A curious fact connected with these captives 

 was that the heads were eaten off, the bodies being untouched." 



Where open nests are resorted to, these are not unfrequently used by two 

 different species in the same year, the Great Horned Owls being the first ten- 



