54 DIVISION I. VERTEBRAL ANIMALS.—CLASS I. AVES. 
“Upon the pampas of the Argentine Republic they are found in great 
numbers, from a few miles west of Rosario, on the Parana, latitude 32° 
56’ south, to the vicinity of San Luis, where the pampas end, and a tra- 
yesia or saline desert commences. 
“On these immense plains of grass it lives in company with the bézeacha. 
The habits of this bird are said to be the same as those of the species that 
inhabits the holes of the marmots upon the prairies of western North Amer- 
ica. But this is not strictly correct, for one writer says of the northern 
species, ‘We have no evidence that the owl and marmot habitually re- 
| sort to one burrow ;’ and Say remarks, ‘that they were either common, 
though unfriendly, residents of the same habitation, or that our owl was 
the sole occupant of a burrow acquired by the right of conquest.’ In this 
respect they differ from their South American relatives, who live in perfect 
harmony with the b/zcacha, and during the day, while the latter is sleeping, 
_ a pair of these birds stand a few inches within the main entrance of the bur- 
row, and at the first strange sound, be it near or distant, they leave their 
station, and remain outside the hole, or upon the mound which forms the 
roof of the domicile. When man approaches, both birds mount above him 
in the air, and keep uttering their alarm note, with irides dilated, until he 
| passes, when they quietly settle down in the grass, or return to their former 
| place. 
| “While on the pampas, I did not observe these birds taking prey during 
| the daytime, but at sunset the bézeachas and owls leave their holes, and 
| search for food, the younger of the former playing about the birds as they 
| alighted near them. They do not associate in companies, there being but 
one pair to each hole, and at night do not stray far from their homes. 
“In describing the North American Burrowing Owl, a writer says that 
the species ‘suddenly disappears in the early part of August,’ and that ‘the 
species is strictly diurnal.’ 
“The Athene cunicularia has not these habits. It does not disappear 
during any part of the year, and it is both nocturnal and diurnal, for, though 
T did not observe it preying by day on the pampas, I noticed that it fed at 
all hours of the day and night on the north shore of the Plata, in the Banda 
Oriental. 
“At longitude 66° west our caravan struck the great saline desert that 
stretches to the Andes, and during fourteen days’ travel on foot I did not see 
a dozen of these birds; but while residing outside the town of San Juan, 
at the eastern base of the Andes, I had an opportunity to watch their habits 
in a locality differing materially from the pampas. 
“The months of September and October are the conjugal ones. During 
the middle of the former month I obtained a male bird with a broken wing. 
