WHITE, Oli BARN OWL. 125 



on all great festivals; and some tribes have an idol in form of an 

 Owl, to which they fasten the real legs of one."* 



This species is rarely found in Pennsylvania in summer. Of 

 its place and manner of building I am unable, from my own 

 observation, to speak. The bird itself has been several times 

 found in the hollow of a tree, and was once caught in a barn in 

 my neighbourhood. European writers inform us, that it makes 

 no nest; but deposits its eggs in the holes of walls, and lays five 

 or six of a whitish colour; is said to feed on mice and small 

 birds, which, like the most of its tribe, it swallows whole, and 

 afterwards emits the bones, feathers, and other indigestible parts, 

 at its mouth, in the form of small round cakes, which are often 

 found in the empty buildings it frequents. During its repose it 

 is said to make a blowing noise, resembling the snoring of a 

 man.t 



It is distinguished in England by various names, the Barn 

 Owl, the Church Owl, Gillihowlet and Screech Owl. In the 

 lowlands of Scotland it is universally called the Hoolet. 



The White or Barn Owl is fourteen inches long, and upwards 

 of three feet six inches in extent; bill a whitish horn colour, 

 longer than is usual among its tribe; space surrounding each eye 

 remarkably concave, the radiating feathers meeting in a high 

 projecting ridge, arching from the bill upwards; between these 

 lies a thick tuft of bright tawny feathers, that are scarcely seen 

 unless the ridges be separated; face white, surrounded by a bor- 

 der of narrow, thickset, velvetty feathers, of a reddish cream 

 colour at the tip, pure silvery white below, and finely shafted 

 with black; whole upper parts a bright tawny yellow, thickly 

 sprinkled with whitish and pale purple, and beautifully inter- 

 spersed with larger drops of white, each feather of the back and 

 wing-coverts ending in an oblong spot of white, bounded by 

 black; head large, tumid; sides of the neck pale yellow ochre, 

 thinly sprinkled with small touches of dusky; primaries and 

 secondaries the same, thinly barred and thickly sprinkled with 



* Arct. Zool. p. 235. t Bewick, i, p. 90. 



