The parents are said to be very brave 

 and fierce in the defense of their young. 

 During the period of incubation the 

 male stands guard and will attack any 

 intruder. The male also procures food 

 for the young, but it is given to them 

 by the female. 



Because of the fact that the Snowy 

 Owls frequent regions where the pur- 

 suit of agriculture is not possible, they 

 are of little economic value. However 

 in their migration visits to Canada and 

 the United States they must be of some 

 service to the agriculturist, for they 

 feed almost entirely upon the harmful 

 rodents and only to a very limited extent 

 upon the more useful birds. It is to be 



regretted that this beautiful bird be- 

 cause of its snow white plumage, which 

 is more or less barred or spotted with 

 a dusky color, should have its life taken 

 merely to satisfy a demand for orna- 

 mental purposes. 



Of its notes Mr. Nuttall says: "His 

 loud, hollow, barking growl, 'whowh, 

 'whowh, 'whowh, hah, hah, hah, hah, 

 the latter syllables with the usual quiv- 

 ering sound of the Owls, and other 

 more dismal cries, sound like the un- 

 earthly bark of Cerberus ; and heard 

 amidst a region of cheerless solitude, 

 his lonely and terrific voice augments 

 rather than relieves the horrors of the 

 scene." 



WHAT THE ORIOLES DID. 



For several years a little colony of 

 Orioles seem to have made the trees on 

 my lawn their nesting places, and by 

 little notation of things I am quite con- 

 vinced that they have been visitors for 

 several years. When nesting, I supply 

 them with fiber, strings, and even nar- 

 row cotton rags, a foot or so long, and 

 by the readiness they make use of these 

 offerings, I am sure that they are oft 

 returning neighbors. I have — with an 

 opera glass — spent not a little time 

 watching them build their nests, and am 

 surprised to note the deftness, and skill 

 they display in nest making from start 

 to finish. While I can not prove it, in 

 my own mind I am convinced that they 

 improve in their nest building with the 

 years, that the young birds are the 

 builders of the less elaborate nests, and 

 the older birds are the weavers of the 

 deep pouch nests that are quilted and 

 felted with such wonderful skill. I 

 have a collection of Oriole nests and 

 they run through the gamut of work- 

 manship from the crude to the finest ; a 

 beautiful nest made entirely of horse 



hair, felted to a point of perfection, that 

 simply leaves its fashioning a mystery. 

 Last summer a pair of O rioles began to 

 build in an elm within thirty yards of 

 the house, selecting the very lowest pen- 

 dent bough for the nest. Promptly they 

 made a visit to the array of strings, and 

 material put out for them, and the nest 

 grew rapidly. Manilla fibre they would 

 not touch ; cotton strings, and narrow 

 brown short rags- were thankfully re- 

 ceived. Then the pair would fly away 

 and be gone for quite a long time, once, 

 an hour, returning laden with the fiber 

 of milkweed which they felted into the 

 walls of the nest, and then strings 

 again would be acceptable. As the 

 nest neared completion, the supports 

 on one side gave way and the nest 

 tipped away over — almost horizontally. 

 This was surely a dilemma. For a 

 whole day the birds flew from branch to 

 branch and viewed the nest from every 

 point. They sang little, but called to 

 each other with rather subdued and low 

 whistles. Could the nest be repaired, 

 seemed to be their deep concern. The 



