404 BARN OWL. 



©al department, and who, I believe, has written an excellent account of 

 the eastern portion of the peninsula of the Floridas. 



Having arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, in October 1833, as 

 soon as my family and myself were settled in the house of my friend the 

 Reverend John Bachman, I received information that a pair of Owls 

 (of the present species) had a nest in the upper story of an abandoned 

 sugar-house in the city, when I immediately proceeded to the place, ac- 

 tompanied by Dr Samuel Wilson and William Kunhardt, Esq. 

 We ascended cautiously to the place, I having pulled off my boots to pre- 

 vent noise. When we reached it I found a sort of large garret filled 

 with sugar-moulds, and lighted by several windows, one of which had 

 two panes broken. I at once discovered the spot where the Owls were, 

 by the hissing sounds of the young ones, and approached slowly and 

 cautiously towards them, until within a few feet, when the parent bird 

 seeing me, flew quickly toward the window, touched the frame of the 

 broken panes, and glided silently through the aperture. I could not even 

 afterwards observe the course of its flight. The young were three in 

 number, and covered with down of a rich cream colour. They raised 

 themselves on their legs, appeared to swell, and emitted a constant hiss- 

 ing sound, somewhat resembling that of a large snake when angry. They 

 continued thus without altering their position, during the whole of our 

 stay, which lasted about twenty minutes. They were on a scattered 

 parcel of bits of straw, and surrounded by a bank made of their ejected 

 peUets. Very few marks of their excrements were on the floor, and 

 they were beautifully clean. A Cotton Rat, newly caught, and still 

 entire, lay beside them, and must have been brought from a distance 

 of several miles, that animal abounding in the rice-fields, none of which, 

 I believe, are nearer than three or four miles. After making some 

 arrangements with the Negro man who kept the house, we returned home. 

 The eggs from which these young Owls had been hatched must have 

 ■been laid six weeks before this date, or about the 15th of September. 



On the 25th of November they had grown much in size, but none of 

 the feathers had yet made their appearance, excepting the primaries, 

 which were now about an inch long, thick, full of blood, and so tender 

 that the least pressure of the fingers might have burst them. As the 

 young grow more and more, the parents feed and attend to them less fre- 

 quently than when very small, coming to them in the night only with food. 

 This proves the caution of these birds in avoiding danger, and the faculty 



