THE PYGMY OWL. 40o 



seemed to be a favorite resort for numbers of these batrachians. Small birds, 

 of which there were numbers about in the vicinity in the willow thickets 

 bordering the stream, did not seem to resent the presence of the little Owl, 

 and paid no attention whatever to it. 



"Its call notes may often be heard during the early spring months while 

 mating, and usually shortly after sundown. Its love notes are by no means 

 unmusical. They somewhat resemble the cooing of the Mourning Dove 

 (Zenaidura macroura), like 'coohuh, coohuh,' softly uttered, and a number of 

 times repeated. Although- 1 have not positively seen this bird while in the 

 act of calling its mate, am quite certain that the notes emanated from this 

 little Owl and no other. I am familiar with the notes of the Acadian and 

 MacFarlane's Owls {Nyctala acadica and Megascops asio macfarlanei), the only 

 other of the small Owls at all likely to be found there, but their notes are 

 different, and they were not heard by me while stationed at Fort Klamath, 

 Oregon. 



"Mr. Henshaw found the Pygmy Owls quite numerous in the southern 

 Rocky Mountains, and states that they are rather sociable in disposition, espe- 

 cially during the fall months. He says he has imitated their call and readily 

 lured them up close enough to be seen. ^ I am inclined to think that they 

 are much more common there than farther north. * * * 



"During an absence once from Fort Klamath on official matters, one of 

 my men found on June 10, 1883, a burrow occupied as a nest by the true 

 Olaucidium gnoma, which at the time it was first discovered must have con- 

 tained eggs. The nest was not disturbed till the day after my return to 

 the post, June 25, when he showed it to me. The nesting site used was a 

 deserted Woodpecker's excavation, in a badly decayed but still living aspen tree 

 and was about 20 feet from the ground; the cavity was about 8 inches deep 

 and 3^ wide at the bottom. This tree, with two others of about the same 

 size, stood right behind, and but a few feet from a target butt on the rifle 

 range, which had been in daily use since May 1, target firing going on 

 three or four hoiirs daily. All this shooting did not seem to disturb these 

 birds, for the first egg must have been deposited some two or three weeks 

 after the target practice season began, but the strangest thing is that the Owls 

 were not discovered long before, as two men employed as markers were con- 

 stantly behind the butt in question during the firing and directly facing the 

 entrance hole of the burrow. When the nest was shown me I had it exam- 

 ined, and, much to my disgust, found it to contain, instead of the much coveted 

 eggs, four young birds about a week or ten days old. I took these; two of 

 them are now in the U. S. National Museum, the remaining two in Mr. William 

 Brewster's collection at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The cavity was well filled 

 with feathers of various kinds, and contained besides the young, the female 

 parent and a full grown Say's chipmunk (Tamias lateralis), that evidently had 



I Auk, Vol. Ill, January, 1886, p. 79. 



