OF VIRGINIA 147 
tracts of timber are now nearly all cut off from this 
section, we will see less and less of this noble bird as the 
years go by. These birds are nocturnal in habits, pro- 
curing all their food during the night. Durng the season 
of 1910, a dark, wet night, I heard a terrible squawking 
coming from one of my laying boxes in a chicken vari. 
Knowing the box contained a sitting hen, I hastily slipped 
on rubber boots, and in my night clothes hurried from 
the house with gun in hand. Just before reaching the 
laying box I saw a shadowy form fly off, but it was too 
dark to even see to shoot. On opening the box I found 
the inside littered with feathers, and the hen with 
practically her entire neck bare, but bleeding only slightly. 
During my investigations my father saw the Great 
Horned Owl fly into a shade tree close to his window, he 
having just poked his head out to see what all the commo- 
tion was about. The next morning we found his tracks 
alongside of the laying box, and showed where he had 
braced his muddy feet in his efforts to pull the hen from 
the first nest inside the box. During a trip to Northamp- 
ton County, May 5th, 1911, a fine male Horned Owl was 
brought to me alive, the bird having been caught in a 
steel trap set over the carcass of a guinea hen which he 
had killed the night before. On Hog Island a pair have 
nested in the old condemned lighthouse for years, and 
another pair made their home in the under side of an 
Osprey’s nest. Only one brood a season. On visiting an 
eagle’s nest, February 23, 1913, I found it oceupied by 
a pair of these owls; the nest about 75 feet up, and 
only about one quarter of a mile from a farm house. 
The crows, as I watched them, made life a hard one 
for the owls in the daytime; at night they were master of 
all they surveyed. 
