176 ^'EW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



settled down upon the woods, the strange voices come to us — 

 JVIiOo^ zvhov-zchod, li'hdo-whdo! and the owl leaves its hollow 

 tree and sets out upon its nightly hunt. When one is suddenly 

 awakened at midnight by one of these birds close overhead, 

 staring, and hooting at the camp fire, one can sympathize with the 

 superstitioits fears of the ancients ! 



Barred Owls are not shy and I have known them to fly up within 

 a few yards of a man, governed apparently by curiosity, while by 

 imitating their cry it is an easy matter to bring them, even from 

 some distance. The hooting is unusually loud and frequent at the 

 season of courtship from February to April. Two to four eggs 

 are laid in the hollow of a tree or in an old crow nest. 



These birds are easily tamed and make interesting and amusing 

 pets, and if liberated in a barn or corn crib during the night, will 

 clear the premises of all rats and mice. Over half their food, in 

 a wild state, consists of mice, while they also feed on small birds, 

 moles, frogs, and insects. It is only very rarely that they attack 

 poultry, the evidence being that on the whole they are of great 

 benefit to mankind. Although as a rule nocturnal, I have seen 

 these birds hunting in daylight in the dark spruce forests of Xova 

 Scotia. 



In Florida and the Gulf States, the humid climate has darkened 

 the plumage, and perhaps the warmer ten:perature has had some- 

 thing to do with the reduction of the feathering on the toes, and 

 these birds have been given the rank of a sub-species. The birds 

 of southern Texas are also slightly different. In the West, how- 

 ever, the Barred, or as it is there called, the Spotted Owl, differs 

 so considerably in plumage, besides being less in size, that it is 

 considered as specifically distinct, Syrnium occidcnfalc Xantus. 

 So rare is it, and so fond of the wilder portions of the mountains 

 that little is known of its habits or of those of the darker form 

 which inhabits the coast of Washington and British Columbia. 



GROUP IV. GREAT GRAY OWLS, ScotiaptCX. 



Considerably larger, but showing its rather close relationship 

 in its general resemblance to the barred owl, the Great Gray Owl, 

 Scotiaptcx ncbidosa (Forster), of the far north, is to most of us 

 known only from books and skins. Although it is a bird of the 

 deep forest, and therefore never goes beyond the limit of tree 

 growth, yet even the severest winters force it but a short distance 

 southward and seldom bevond the northern border of the United 



