spruces. Specimens shot by his party had been feeding on marsh 

 hawks, jays, crossbills, sparrows and other birds. The pigeon hawk 

 and sparrow hawk visit the same region 'the latter rarely. The 

 osprey fishes along all the larger rivers and lakes, wandering far to 

 the northward. 



Several owls are to be found in the interior of Alaska. The far- 

 ranging short-eared owl is common, but is migratory. The great 

 gray species is perhaps the best known owl of the wooded interior, 

 to which it is almost exclusively confined. It is a sleepy, stupid 

 sort of bird, at any rate in the daytime, when it may sometimes be 

 caught in the hand without seeking to avoid this misadventure. It 

 is a hunter of small birds. Dr. Ball wrote that in his day old men and 

 old women among the Indians ate it, but added : "The natives have a 

 superstition that if young persons eat it they will become old very 

 soon and die." 



Another common species is the handsome little Richardson's owl, 

 and this, also, is frequently taken from its perch by hand, and is the 

 subject of legends and bed-time stories among both Eskimos and 

 Indians, who sometimes keep it as a pet for the children. It usually 

 nests in a hole in a tree, but now and then takes possession of the 

 abandoned nest of a jay or thrush. 



The western, or subarctic, variety of the great horned owl is to 

 be discovered in both summer and winter in all parts of Alaska, al- 

 though restricted to the wooded district during its breeding-season 

 which begins early, sometimes early in April. The nest is a large 

 structure, made of twigs and branches and placed in a spruce tree in 

 the depths of the woods. Mr. Nelson, in his Report, gives a vivid 

 picture of the feelings inspired in the winter traveler by the hooting 

 of these great owls, as he listens to them in the darkness and toil of 

 a sledge-journey across the snowy and otherwise utterly silent wastes. 

 "When the winter draws on/' he tells us, "and during the famine 

 period just before the spring opens, it is common for them [the owls] 

 to get a foot into a fox-trap while they are foraging for food. Again, 

 in early June, as the fur-traders come down the Yukon with their 

 furs they not infrequently bring the half-grown young of these birds 

 as pets." 



The snowy owl, on the contrary, is rare in the wooded district, 

 but the American hawk owl is familiar throughout the year. "This," 

 Nelson remarks, "is perhaps the most abundant bird of prey through- 

 out the entire wooded part of northern Alaska. It is rather closely 

 limited to the region of spruce and pine forests of the interior, and 



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