LAND BIRDS. 299 
on the ‘Inland Route,” Northern Michigan (probably in Cheboygan 
county), about the middle of June 1900 or 1901. By the exercise of con- 
siderable ingenuity and a vast amount of patience she secured a good 
photograph of the parent bird as it was about to enter the nest in the early 
morning. This picture was published in the Ladies Home Journal for 
June, 1906 (Vol. XXIII, No. 7, p. 25), and appears to furnish the northern- 
most nesting record for the species, about 454°. 
We have also received an account of a nest of “white owls” found in a 
hollow tree near Mason, Ingham county, in the spring of 1906, and have 
no doubt the species was the Barn Owl. Specimens have been taken at or 
near Monroe, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Olivet, Kalamazoo, Hudson, 
Johnstown, Grand Rapids, Coldwater, Saginaw, Plymouth, Brighton, 
Fig. 78. Barn Owls. About three months old. 
Photograph from life by Dr. Thomas H. Jackson. 
Howell, Ionia, Grand Ledge, and Lansing. Apparently this species is not 
migratory, but remains all winter in the vicinity of its nesting places. 
Several of the specimens above recorded were taken in mid-winter. 
This species is strictly nocturnal in its habits, and feeds very largely upon 
rats and mice, although it occasionally takes a small bird, not infrequently 
an English Sparrow. It also eats ground squirrels, shrews, bats, frogs, 
insects, crayfish, and more rarely fish. Out of 52 stomachs reported upon 
by Dr. A. K. Fisher, 1 contained poultry; 3, other birds; 17, mice; 17, 
other mammals; and 4, insects. An examination of 200 of the “pellets” 
ejected by a family of these owls showed a total of 454 skulls of small 
mammals. Of these there were 225 meadow mice; 2 pine mice, 179 house 
mice, 20 rats, 6 jumping mice, 20 shrews, and 1 star-nosed mole. There 
was also one skull of a Vesper Sparrow (A. Kt. Fisher). 
Unlike most other owls this species frequently nests in cities and villages 
and often takes up its abode in the deserted loft of a warehouse, mill or 
church, tower, where, on the bare floor or in a shallow nest made of the 
