144 THE BIRDS 
This little fellow remains the year round with us, and 
is quite common over our whole area. Both winter and 
summer nights, if clear, one may generally hear one of 
these owls calling or whistling their mournful notes from 
a near-by grove, or around the farm outbuildings. Low 
down on the eves of the buildings they often sit, silently 
awaiting the appearance of a young rat or mouse, pouncing 
upon it and returning to their perch without stopping, and 
devouring it at their leisure. Undoubtedly they do a 
great deal of good, preying on the field mice, moles, small 
reptiles, insects, and yarious other species of small 
mammals, all of which are procured at night. On the 
other hand, they catch and destroy numbers of small birds, 
such as juncos, sparrows, bluebirds, and wrens, but the 
harm they do along this line is far overbalanced by the 
good they do destroying insects and obnoxious small 
mammals. One winter evening (1911), one of these 
birds kept calling from a tree near my barn, and wishing 
a skin for school study work, I took my gun and went out 
to gather him in. I soon returned, however, without him, 
for I found him so intently watching a rat hole from the 
lower eaves of my barn that I hadn’t the heart to kill him. 
Other plans than mine are made, however, for the next 
morning, upon opening up the chicken houses, I found 
my little Screech Owl lying dead before a rat hole, and 
upon skinning him I found a slight blood clot in the front 
of the skull, evidence enough, I thought, to show he had 
hit the building in full flight, so intent must he have been 
after his prey. Both phases, the gray and the rufous, are 
found with us, the color being no distinction of sex, season 
or age. They nest in natural cavities, or deserted flicker 
holes usually, sometimes buildings; the average height 
being about ten feet above ground. The only nesting 
material used are some few feathers or bits of fur frcm 
