1889. ] BENDIRE, West and Eggs of the Screech Owl. 201 
climbing it; she will then fly out. Otherwise you have to take 
her off her eggs. In some instances she will feign dead, and lie 
on her back in your open palm with her eyes shut ; immediately 
you throw her off, however, she will right herself on wing, and 
gaining a bough upon a neighboring tree, will crouch forward, 
bending her ear-tufts back, and look very spiteful and wicked. 
At other times when removed from her eggs she will snap her 
bill, moan slightly, and show fight. Both male and female in- 
dulge in the screech which differs but little from that of their 
Eastern cousins ; its sharp distressing notes can be heard of a still 
night, a mile distant. 
‘¢The lately hatched young are clothed in beautiful white down. 
In the latter part of June before they are well able to fly, they 
may be seen sitting side by side, perfectly motionless, upon a 
limb close by the nest-site. The young and their parents as well 
seem to desert their holes and live among the trees for the balance 
of the summer ; but against the cold winds that strip the leaves 
off the trees in the fall, suitable tree holes are selected for their 
winter quarters.” 
While stationed at Fort Custer, Montana, during the wintet of 
1884-85, I took five of these birds, but was unable to find their nests. 
I discovered their presence there quite accidentally. On Dec. 1, 
1884, while out hunting Sharptail Grouse (Pediocetes phast- 
anellus campestris) in a bend of the Bighorn River, a few 
miles south of the Post, as I was walking by a thick clump of 
willows I indistinctly noticed a whitish-looking object dropping on 
the ground, apparently out of the densest portion of the thicket 
and on the opposite side from where I was standing at the time, 
and simultaneously heard several plaintive squeaks from that direc- 
tion. Carefully skirting around the thicket, which was some twenty 
yards long and perhaps five wide, I saw the object of my search 
savagely engaged in killing a meadow mouse which it had just 
captured. I promptly shot it. It proved to be a female and 
excessively fat, in fact all the specimens I secured subsequently, 
showed conclusively that they managed to secure an abundance of 
food in that Arctic winter climate, and that a portion of this at 
least, seems to be obtained in the daytime. The four other spec- 
imens collected by me were all obtained in similiar locations. I 
have no doubt that it breeds in the vicinity of Fort Custer, but I 
lost all trace of these birds in the spring months and failed to hear 
