THE OOLOGIST. 



155 



searches in the middle of winter. The 

 Creeper generally begins its search at 

 the base of the tree and circles upward 

 and sometimes after reaching the higher 

 branches will drop to the base of the 

 trunk again. It differs, markedly, from 

 the movements of the Nuthatch, which 

 not rarely moves head downward in its 

 search for insect food or seeds. I have 

 seen the Red-bellied Nuthatch clinging 

 to and feeding from a cone. 



The Kinglets, Gnatcatchers and Tit- 

 mice are pre-eminent as acrobats while 

 searching for food, and the Black-cap- 

 ped Chickadee is foremost in these od- 

 dities of movement. Sometimes the 

 Chickadee catches an insect on the 

 wing. The Bluebird is another of our 

 f avorities, who frequently makes a fly- 

 ing capture, and I have seen a warbling 

 male make a series of forays and catch 

 an insect at every attempt. 



MOBRIS GiBBS, M. D. 



Field Notes From Manitoba. 



Goniinued. 



THE WESTERN HOBNED OWL. 



Eighteen or twenty years ago I re- 

 member reading in Wilson's American 

 Ornithology of the Virginian Horned 

 Owl; but it was not till the year 1887 

 that I had the pleasure of making the 

 personal acquaintance of Bubo virgin- 

 ianus. 



The farmer with whom my first few 

 months in this country were spent, 

 came home one night from a few hours 

 after the Prairie Chickens, and brought 

 with him a fine Owl that he had shot on 

 his way home in the dusk sitting on the 

 top of a straw stack. I mounted it for 

 him. It was a fine specimen of the 

 Western Horned Owl. 



Since then I have shot and bandied a 

 large number and taken both the young 

 and eggs, having had fine opportunities 

 to observe their habits. In this section 

 they are fairly plentiful, frequenting 

 the timbered country and are very par- 



tial to heavy timber following the course 

 of creeks and rivers. 



In such localities almost any evening 

 in the year while walking or driving 

 through the woods my attention has 

 been arested by their call, . "Hoo, Hoo, 

 Hoo," thrice repeated, then a pause as 

 though listening for an answer, and 

 then repeated again till Mr. Bubo is 

 tired or goes off to look for some din- 

 ner. 



Until the spring of 1892 I had never 

 found a nest of this species because I 

 did not know just when or where to 

 look for them. However, on the l,st of 

 May, while looking for Red-tailed 

 Hawks' nests, I chanced to see a pair 

 of feathery tufts protruding from the 

 top of a Red-tailed Hawk's nest. I rap- 

 ped on the tree and off flew Mrs. Bubo. 

 I climbed the tree expecting a set of 

 Horned Owl eggs, and peeping over the 

 edge of the nest saw three baby Owls in 

 different stages of growth, but all ap- 

 parently equally surprised and angry at 

 my intrusion. One was feathering, one 

 about half grown, while the third was a 

 little downy fellow just emerged from 

 his prison cell. I left them still mani- 

 festing their anger by a volume of hisses 

 and bill snappings and descended to 

 terra firma again. Two weeks after I 

 called again to find the big fellow sitting 

 on a branch away from the nest and the 

 other two still in the nest. I took the 

 two and brought them home, making 

 them a cage of a large box and made 

 pets of them till near the end of July, 

 when I gave them their liberty again. 



From these little captives I obtained 

 some interesting notes, some of which I 

 will record here. During their captivity 

 they were quite friendly and except 

 when fed always lived on the best of 

 terms, but when fed^they would some- 

 times show a disposition to quarrel over 

 the possession of the food given to them. 

 I fed them bodies of birds I had skin- 

 ned, but they did not seem to like this 

 kind of food, only eating it when forced 



