138 



AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



tened to them as they sat in the top of a great white oak or flitted silently 

 overhead. Occasional!}^, one I took to be the female, would go into the little 

 cave. They did not appear to notice me and "who-whoed" to tlieir heart's 

 content, and I decided that the female had a slightly louder and deeper voice 

 than her mate. This season I made upward of thirtj^ trips to the nest and 

 learned that although they are nocturnal birds, they sometimes lay their eggs 

 in the daytime. This egg was laid at about nine in the morning; at the end 

 of two weeks no more had been laid, and I took this and put in its place an 

 egg of a Red Leghorn. I visited the place dail}^, but on the third day, for 

 some reason, she quit the nest and gave up the poultry business. On one oc- 

 casion after the second set had been taken from this nest, she laid a third 

 set in an old Red-tailed Hawk nest, seventy-eight feet from the ground in an 

 old sjT^camore about three hundred yards up the creek from the nest in the 

 cliff. 



If I remember correctly the eggs were iisually deposited at intervals of 

 from two to five days, and incubation was irregular in them, one little owl ap- 

 pearing several days previous to his brothers or sisters. The old nest was 

 on sandstone and contained gravel, dirt, bones, etc., the natural accumulation 

 of years of owl occupancy. 



