The Screech Owls 



not be amiss to speculate. In the first 

 place, the bird is less tuneful — or less 

 noisy — and so less in evidence in the 

 West. The notes, too, are different, and, 

 possibly, less terrifying, though terror 

 with birds must be more a matter of 

 remembered experience than of tone qual- 

 ity and suggestion in itself. Instead of 

 that "tremulous quaver, exquisitely 

 mournful and sweet," but also very 

 gruesome, as it proceeds from the throat 

 of a famished, bird-hunting Screech Owl 

 in zero weather, we have in the California 

 bird duller tones and a song phrase made 

 up in its early numbers of separate and 

 easily distinguishable notes. But also, 

 chiefly, I 

 think, the 

 Screech 

 Owls of the 

 Pacific 

 Coast, hav- 

 ing in win- 

 ter a more 

 abundant 

 and con- 

 stant supply 



of their favorite food, — mice, beetles, frogs, and even, occasionally, fish — 

 are not often driven to attack other birds. Tyler records an instance where 

 a Screech Owl was chased by Mockingbirds; and, in general, it may be 

 said that almost any bird will join in the pursuit of any night-prowling 

 Owl. Even that most impeccable mouser, the Barn Owl, is sometimes 

 set upon, in sport. But the key to the woods has been handed over to 

 the Pygmy Owl, and him the small birds fear as they do not Otus asio 

 bendirei. 



It is only at nesting time that we can acquire anything more than 

 the merest scrap of information about our Screech Owls. Early in April, 

 or, rarely, in later March, some natural cavity in a tree, whether live oak, 

 Cottonwood, or sycamore, or else some deserted Woodpecker's nest, 

 is selected for a home. Instances are found where the birds used old 

 rat nests, and they are suspected of occupying old Magpie nests as well. 

 No lining material is required, and the three or four rounded white eggs 



1106 



Photo by 



D. R. Dickey 



cf L. Huey 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SCREECH OWL 



