176 BIRDS 



associated with these harmless birds? Because it makes 

 its home so near ours, often in some crevice of them, in 

 fact, in the hollow of a tree in the orchard, or around the 

 barn lofts, this is probably the most familiar owl to the 

 majority of Canadians and Americans. It keeps closely 

 concealed by day, often in a dense evergreen or in its 

 favorite hollow; and we should not know of its near-by 

 presence in the neighborhood except for the persecutions of 

 the blue jay which takes a mischievous delight in rousing it 

 from its slumbers for the little song birds to mock at as it 

 flies, bewildered and blinded by the sunlight. 



The Barred Owl 



Length — 18 to 20 inches; female the larger. 



Male and Female — ^Upper parts grayish brown, each 

 feather with two or three white or buff bars; facial disk 

 gray, finely barred or mottled with dusky; eyes bluish 

 black, and bill yellow; under parts white washed with 

 buff; the breast barred; the sides and underneath 

 streaked with dusky; legs and feet feathered to nails; 

 wings and tail barred with brown; no ear tufts. 



Range — Eastern United States to Nova Scotia and Mani- 

 toba; west to Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas; 

 nesting throughout range. 



Season — ^Permanent resident. 



Whoo-whoo-too-whoo-too-o-o, with endless variation, a 

 deep-toned, guttural, weird, startHng sound, like the wail 

 of some lost soul asking its way through the dark, and 

 haw-haw-hoo-hoo, like a coarse, mocking laugh, come from 

 this noisy hoot owl between dusk and midfiight, rarely at 



