180 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



hand, they will assume adult plumage either of a general bright 

 rufous color, or else a brownish gray, being streaked with black 

 in both phases. This description, together with the small size — 

 about nine inches in length— and feather ears on the sides of the 

 head, will serve for identification. 



There are few birds more trustful of man than the Screech Owl, 

 coming often into the very streets of villages, and nesting there 

 if they can find a suitable cavity, while upon the neighboring 

 farms they are omnipresent. Everywhere it finds work ready to its 

 talons and beak, work which no cunning of man could supplement, 

 in ridding gardens and fields of mice and noxious insects. 



In the stomachs of two hundred and fifty owls from all parts 

 of the country, the remains of mice and shrews were found 

 in a hundred, v/hile insects had formed the diet of a hundred more. 

 Thirty-eight only had fed on small birds, and this item is of the 

 greatest importance in this species, since, being the only owl 

 which frequents our villages and even cities, it may prove of great 

 importance in the future in keeping down the numbers of the 

 pestiferous English sparrows. A gentleman from Ohio writes 

 as follows concerning this latter bird : "Last summer they were so 

 thick around my house as almost to set me wild, when a little 

 screech owl got to visiting us every night, and at each visit he 

 carried off a sparrow. My house is thickly covered with vines, 

 and the little owl would make a dart into the vines and catch his 

 sparrow every time. By fall they were well thinned out." A 

 Screech Owl should never be killed, but left to live his life of 

 constant usefulness to mankind. 



The sedentary life of this species of owl, together with its 

 plasticity of structure, doubtless explains the quick and radical 

 reaction which it shows to various environments. In the United 

 States alone there are no fewer than thirteen forms of the 

 Screech Owl, all differing so much inter sc, that they have been 

 given specific or sub-specific rank. 



As we know nothing of the ancestry of these birds, it is impos- 

 sible to tell which are the most modified, and which approach 

 most closely to the prototype. The Screech Owl as we know it in 

 the east, remains unchanged as far south as Georgia, and west 

 to Dakota and Kansas. In Florida and along the Gulf coast, the 

 owls are smaller and darker, but west of the plains from Canada 

 to Mexico we find as many as eleven dift'erent forms. This may 

 mean that the Rocky Mountain region was the original center of 

 distribution of this species, or it may reflect only the extremes 



