174 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIEDS 



Aug. 14, 1854. I hear the tremulous squealing 

 scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods, sounding 

 somewhat like the neighing of a horse, not like the snipe. 



May 7, 1855. A short distance beyond this and the 

 hawk's-nest pine, I observed a middling-sized red oak 

 standing a little aslant on the side-hill over the swamp, 

 with a pretty large hole in one side about fifteen feet 

 from the ground, where apparently a limb on which a 

 felled tree lodged had been cut some years before and 

 so broke out a cavity. I thought that sucli a hole was 

 too good a one not to be improved by some inhabit- 

 ant of the wood. Perhaps the gray squirrels I had just 

 seen had their nest there. Or was not the entrance big 

 enough to admit a screech owl ? So I thought I would 

 tap on it and put my ear to the trunk and see if I 

 could hear anything stirring within it, but I heard no- 

 thing. Then I concluded to look into it. So I shinned 

 up, and when I reached up one hand to the hole to pull 

 myself up by it, the thought passed through my mind 

 perhaps something may take hold my fingers, but no- 

 thing did. The first limb was nearly opposite to the 

 hole, and, resting on this, I looked in, and, to my great 

 surprise, there squatted, filling the hole, which was 

 about six inches deep and five to six wide, a salmon - 

 brown bird not so big as a partridge, seemingly asleep 

 within three inches of the top and close to my face. It 

 was a minute or two before I made it out to be an owl. 

 It was a salmon-brown or fawn (?) above, the feathers 

 shafted with small blackish-brown somewhat hastate (?) 

 marks, grayish toward the ends of the wings and 

 tail, as far as I could see. A large white circular space 



