The American Barn Owl 



has been saddled with a most unmelodious voice. She does not know it, 

 poor thing, and fills the night, therefore, with screeches which seem the 

 very soul of petulance or hate. This challenge note of the Barn Owl is 

 harsh beyond all expression, a snarling churr, ground out between clenched 

 teeth. I do not know where Lewis Carroll thinks he got the name for 

 his impossible animal, the "Snark"; but I suggest that it came subcon- 

 sciously from the Barn Owl's cry, snarrk. By this sound we know that 

 the Barn Owl is abroad, 

 and by the sustained 

 succession of these 

 sounds, we judge that 

 the Barn Owl spends 

 more time a-wing than 

 do any of the Strigine 

 owls. Aluco 1 is a tire- 

 less quester, the buzzard 

 of the night, pausing 

 only, and that very fre- 

 quently, when its prey is 

 spotted on the ground. 

 The function of the 

 snarrk cry is not exactly 

 known, although the 

 birds do hunt more or 

 less in pairs, and may 

 wish to keep in touch, 

 however distantly. It is 

 more probable, however, 

 that snark is a joy cry, 

 and expresses the bird's 

 delight in the prospects 

 of the chase, or its 

 exultation over life lived 

 under the tipsy beams of the swelling moon. 



In the springtime this joy of life, or else the passion of love, urges 

 the Barn Owl to more extended effort. Fluttering his wings softly, with 

 head uplifted, and as it were, dancing in midair, the bird says crick crick 

 crick crick crick crick crick, in a sort of ecstatic chant. Or again, the 

 note is doubled, witta witta witta, in breathless cadence, while the bird 

 drifts slowly about with no other thought, apparently, than to maintain 



Taken near Escondido Photo by J. B. Dixon 



NEST AND EGGS OF AMERICAN BARN OWL 



1 Formerly so called. 



1073 



