ci6 The Roller-like Birds 



j i 



weeks, and as a bird will occasionally begin to set soon after the first egg is 

 deposited and as eggs are laid on alternate days, the last one may not hatch until 

 two weeks after the first." Both parents assist in duties of incubation. 



Although the Barn Owl is one of the most distinctly nocturnal of any of its 

 tribe, it can see perfectly well in the brightest daylight if it is, for any reason, 

 required to leave its retreat. It usually sleeps during the day, sitting upright 

 in some dark corner, but as twilight comes on it emerges from its seclusion and 

 hurries on silent wings to the hunting grounds, which are usually low meadows, 

 prairies, or marsh lands, where its favorite prey abounds. In the eastern part 

 of the United States its food consists principally of mice and rats, while in the 

 South it subsists largely on the cotton rat and in the Pacific States on the gopher 

 and California ground squirrel, all, but especially the latter, being very destructive 

 to many growing crops. The numbers of these noxious animals that are destroyed 

 by a single pair of birds is truly astonishing. Lord Lilford, speaking of the 

 European species, states that he has seen a pair of Barn Owls bring food to their 

 nest no less than seventeen times within half an hour, and Streator, writing of 

 the Barn Owls in California, states that he has found "a deposit of pellets of 

 nothing but gopher hair and bones which had been ejected by the Owls, and 

 had accumulated to the extent of two or three cubic feet in the trees in which 

 they lived." The great number of skulls found in these ejected pellets has already 

 been indicated (p. 513), and it seems hardly necessary to urge the protection of 

 these birds on the score of their usefulness. 



In the southern parts of the United States this Owl is a resident species, 

 but in the other portions of its range it is migratory, often somewhat gregarious 

 during the winter. It does not appear able to withstand any severe cold and 

 hence it is a rather late breeder, nesting from January or February in the extreme 

 southern districts to April or May in the north. Not infrequently two broods 

 are reared in a season. 



The European Barn Owl (S. flammed), which is held by many to be the prin- 

 cipal species of the genus and the type whence has sprung most of the forms 

 spread so widely over the globe, is smaller than the American species, the average 

 length being only fourteen inches. As properly restricted, it is found only in 

 Europe and Africa, and may be described as light tawny yellow above, with 

 lower plumage white. In this, as in the American Barn Owl, there is a light 

 and a dark phase of plumage, the former being white, the latter tawny, below. 

 As its habits are practically the same as those of its American cousin, it is not 

 necessary to recount them at length. Its note is described by Dresser as "a loud, 

 harsh, weird shriek, and both the old and young birds utter a deep snoring 

 sound." Its food consists of rats, mice, moles, large insects, small birds, occa- 

 sionally also of fish, but principally of mice. 



Owls (Subfamily Bubonince). All the remaining Owls, whatever their size, 

 plumage, habits, or geographical distribution, are included within the limits 

 of the second subfamily, and the difficulty of finding a satisfactory collective 

 name for such a miscellaneous assemblage is not, perhaps, to be wondered 

 at; without great violence to the facts, however, they may receive the gen- 



