OF THE UNITED STATES 239 



of the family, the female of this species is a far stronger bird 

 than the male, and will doubtless, when pressed by hunger, fall 

 upon, kill, and eat him, as has been noticed several times when 

 pairs of these birds have been kept in captivity. 



No known owl in the world gets away with more game, chick- 

 ens and other domestic fowls, together with a long list of me- 

 dium-sized mammals and iish, than does this untamable, tyran- 

 nical, and blood-thirsty demon of the night. They arc the 

 princes of nocturnal raptorical hunters, being keen of eye, power- 

 fully equipped with merciless talons, it is the rarest thing that 

 they ever go unprovided with food, or fail to amply supply their 

 big, down-covered, voracious young. When the hunting is at its 

 best these birds only deign to eat the heads of their victims, 

 seeming to kill just for the pleasure of the act. 



The deep and bass-voice hooting of this species is as familiar 

 to sportsmen and bird lovers, as is the appearance, form, and size 

 of the owl itself. During the winter of 18.8-! or lN.So I pulled in 

 an open boat with three companions forty miles down the Ala- 

 bama river. It took the best part of the entire night, which was 

 a pitchy dark one, and for nearly all the distance the banks of 

 the river were heavily timbered. In some places we were 

 obliged to pull under the low sweeping limbs of the cypress, from 

 which swung masses of the moss called " Spanish beard." Every 

 once in a while a Great Horned Owl would hoot out, and make 

 the very forests echo with his uncanny cry. For some time none 

 of these were very near, but about an hour after midnight, dur- 

 ing a lull, when the party had hardly spoken a word for a long 

 while, and the boat was passing near the bank in the very deep- 

 est of the shadows of the night, one of these ponderous owls 

 gave full vent to his unearthly hoot from a limb not ten feet di- 

 rectly above our heads. Out it rang in all its unchecked vigor, — 

 " who-who-cooks-for-you — who,'' — and the effect upon the boat's 

 company was pretty much the same as though a royal Bengal 

 tiger had suddenly pounced down among us, and propounded 

 some similar impertinent interrogatory. This owl breeds in 

 hollow trees, in the deserted nests of the larger diurnal rap- 

 tores, rarely upon the ground or in hollow logs upon the same, 

 and in the clefts of rocks, and similar places. The set of white 

 eggs, of rounded oval form, usually numbers from two to three 

 only, and they take about twenty-eight days to hatch. There 

 is a great deal in the history of this bird of a very interesting 



