OLD CROW 205 



Family STRIGIDAE: Typical Owls 



Indians, like Eskimos, are interested in owls, take pains to observe 

 them, and are clear in relating what they know about them. "We 

 did not see short-eared owls at Old Crow and our illustration and 

 description did not evoke recognition of them which could be con- 

 sidered to be explicit. The resident owls and snowy owls were well 

 known. 



Bubo virginianus lagophonus (Oberholser) 



1 male May 3 weight 1445 g. fat testes 7x11, 6x9 mm. 



John Moses brought us the great horned owl listed above from 

 his camp 10 miles down river from the village. He reported that 

 two owls were about a nest, but his later examination showed the 

 nest to be old and the second owl could not be obtained. Tlie testes 

 of the specimen were less than breeding size, and the date of nesting 

 would more probably have been earlier than later. On May 11 

 Francis Williamson observed a great horned owl hunting over the 

 village at midnight. A feather thought to be from a great horned 

 owl was found in May near a slough a mile south of the river, and 

 in this area on June 5 Robert Bruce and I saw a large brownish 

 owl while it made several short flights through the woods during 

 which a rusty blackbird was able to engage the owl more closely 

 than we could accomplish. 



Great horned owls, because of their conspicuous appearance and 

 calls rather than for their abundance, are well known to the Indians, 

 who call them Veesay. Judging from what we could learn the 

 residence areas of these owls are a number of miles apart. 



From examples of northwestern horned owls in the U. S. National 

 Museum this specimen differed in the general light color, small amount 

 of brown, and the contrast of the black and white markings. When 

 two additional examples, obtained in central arctic Alaska, had been 

 borrowed from George Sutton of the University of Oklahoma who 

 has designated them B. v. lagoj^honus, it became apparent that the 

 specimen from Old Crow was a rather light example of lagophonus, 

 distinguishable from algistus, saturatus, and most readily from wap- 

 acuthu. It is the form so far recorded in arctic Alaska and Yukon, 

 whereas xoapacuthu is the form to be expected in the Mackenzie 

 Delta. 



Nyctea scandiaca (Linnaeus) 



None of our party saw a snowy owl, but to the Indians at Old 

 Crow wlio call them Eiseitivay, they are well known as occasional 

 winter visitors and are more frequently seen on Crow Flats. 



